ViaSat Inc., a global broadband services and technology 
company, today inaugurated its first Research and Development (R&D) Centre in Chennai, India. The new Centre advances ViaSat’s globalization efforts, strengthens its presence in India and enables the Company to tap into high-quality engineering talent to drive technology innovation.
The new ViaSat R&D Centre will have more than 30,000 square feet to accommodate nearly 125 engineers. By 2019, ViaSat expects to have more than 250 engineers in Chennai working on next-generation technologies.
The new Chennai R&D Centre will help ViaSat on its mission to connect the world with high-speed broadband internet. The news comes as India continues to transform into a digitally-empowered society under the government’s ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart Cities’ programmes.
“India is a recognized technology innovation hub with highly-sought after engineering talent and business potential,” said Mark Dankberg, ViaSat chairman and CEO. “The new Centre in Chennai is a major step in building ViaSat’s footprint in Asia, making India important to our strategic globalization efforts, R&D acceleration initiatives and our ability to bring comprehensive, next-generation cloud, virtualization, networking and sophisticated network management applications to market.”
ViaSat is a world leader in broadband communications. In 2012, the Company launched ViaSat-1, the world’s highest-capacity satellite at the time of its launch, which earned it a Guinness World Records® title. ViaSat-1 is ViaSat’s first-generation satellite broadband platform. The Company plans to launch a ViaSat-2 satellite broadband platform in 2017, which will more than double the bandwidth and increase coverage seven-fold over the prior generation. Beginning in 2019, ViaSat will launch the first of three ViaSat-3 class satellite platforms. Each ViaSat-3 class satellite will offer 1,000 Gbps (or 1 Terabit per second) of network capacity, making each satellite equal to the total capacity of all commercial satellites in space today – combined. The first two satellites will focus on the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), respectively, with a third satellite system planned for the Asia Pacific region, completing ViaSat’s global service coverage.
“The investments made by ViaSat in the new Chennai R&D Centre represent a commitment towards accelerating our innovation efforts,” said Sathya Narayanaswamy, vice president and country manager, ViaSat India. “If Indian government policy allows, a ViaSat-3 class satellite could connect millions of Indians to broadband internet, potentially adding billions to India’s gross domestic product.”
