Inmarsat

Inmarsat is the dignified grandparent of the satcom industry, the one with war stories, expensive suits, and a British accent. Founded in 1979 to provide safety comms for ships at sea, Inmarsat didn’t just show up late to the satellite party, they helped host the damn thing. They started as an intergovernmental organization with a mandate, not a business plan. It was less about revenue, more about making sure boats didn’t sink in silence.

Over time, they grew from “rescue channel for captains” to “anywhere, anytime communications for governments, airlines, maritime giants, and warfighters.” That’s where the money showed up. Maritime was their fortress. You needed bandwidth in the middle of the ocean? Inmarsat had you covered, as long as you were ready to pay for it. Their L-band service (the ever-persistent, weather-resistant cockroach of spectrum) became the default for safety services. Slow, expensive, but absolutely refuses to go down. It’s not sexy, but it works when everything else doesn’t.

Then came the broadband era. Inmarsat launched Global Xpress (GX), their Ka-band fleet, with global coverage from geostationary orbit. That system gave them real broadband over satellite, for ships, planes, and the odd army base. This was Inmarsat trying to be modern: faster, bigger pipes, more consumer-friendly pricing models, well, “friendly” in the way champagne is friendly to your wallet.

Despite its upgrades, Inmarsat always felt like a boutique satcom firm, sharp suits, polished service, solid uptime, a favorite of militaries and mega-shippers. But it struggled with growth. LEO constellations started stealing attention, investors got fidgety, and the market wanted scale.

Cue Viasat. In 2021, the Californian broadband cowboy showed up and dropped $7.3 billion to buy Inmarsat. It was pitched as a merger of equals. It looked a lot like a buyout of a tired aristocrat by an American looking to dominate global mobility markets. The deal gave Viasat immediate access to Inmarsat’s mobile spectrum, a huge client base, and credibility in verticals Viasat had only flirted with.

Not everything went smoothly. The European Commission had regulatory concerns (because spectrum consolidation tends to raise eyebrows), and the UK’s competition watchdog spent over a year sniffing around. The acquisition finally closed in 2023, cementing one of the biggest satcom consolidations in recent memory.

Inmarsat today is basically Viasat’s mobility and government arm, but the brand still carries weight, especially in maritime, aviation safety, and narrowband government services. Whether it thrives inside the Viasat structure or gets spun out in some activist-driven breakup is anyone’s guess.

What’s clear is this: Inmarsat helped write the rulebook on mobile satellite communications. It might not scream innovation in 2025, but if your signal still works during a cyclone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, chances are you’ve got Inmarsat to thank. Quiet, reliable, absurdly expensive, and still somehow relevant.