Many people are now well aware of the merger that took place between Wild Blue and ViaSat.  This merger was important for several reasons, however the two primary reasons are to receive a greater amount of government funding and to allow Wild Blue to better utilize ViaSat’s next generation Satellite Technology.  It is no secret that President Obama plans to make available over $7 billion in funding to make broadband internet a readily accessible resource to all Americans.  Much of this funding is going to be made available as competitive grants to current internet technology companies to expand their networks.  The merging of Wild Blue and ViaSat sets the company up as a much more likely competitor for this funding.  The company has already received approximately $30 million dollars of this funding and has applied it to customer subscription subsidies.  The next major endeavor is the launch of Wild Blue’s 3^rd Satellite, officially known as ViaSat-1.  Via-Sat-1 is a major advancement in satellite technology.  In previous times that a new satellite has launched, a rush in subscriptions quickly followed.  Within a very short amount of time the capacity was sold out in certain geographical areas.  Even at this, current satellite technologies are not designed to handle many of the common demands of internet users such as VoIP and On-line gaming.  The current Wild Blue system tops out at 1.5 mbps.  ViaSat-1 will contain more capacity than all current North American satellites combined making the service available to more than a million additional customers.  This new satellite will have 10 times the throughput of any other Ka-band satellite with only a fraction of the in-orbit costs of the current newest satellites.  Best of all this satellite will increase download speeds from 512 kbps-1.5mbps to 2mbps-10mbps without increasing costs.  These speeds are faster than what many DSL providers offer.  ViaSat-1 is currently in production and should be launched sometime in 2011.