KVH Industries, Inc. has announced that coverage for the last remaining region in KVH's original network plan – South America – is now under contract and scheduled to go live in July 2011 using the IS-14 satellite. This joint effort by KVH and its partner, ViaSat, Inc., will provide mini-VSAT Broadband SM service to leisure mariners, commercial shipping and fishing vessels, and the expanding South American oil and gas industry, as well as network coverage for ViaSat’s Yonder ® in-flight broadband network for commercial and business aircraft.
Mini-VSAT Broadband was developed to equip vessels with high data rates with downloads as fast as 2 Mbps and uploads as fast as 512 Kbps, as well as Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone lines. The network uses ViaSat ArcLight ® spread spectrum technology, which was previously available only for military applications. Multiple airtime plans are available, including simple metered plans ($0.99 for data and $0.49 per minute for voice services and packages starting at less than $50 per month) and fixed monthly and seasonal plans with even lower data and voice costs. These benefits are available to mariners on any size vessel, for any application, and even in adverse weather conditions via the award-winning 24" TracPhone V7 and compact, 14.5" TracPhone V3 antennas and the integrated ArcLight modem.