[SatNews] In a first-of-its-kind arrangement for the company, Boeing [NYSE: BA] is providing a U.S. government customer with military Ka-band satellite communications service from a commercial satellite.
Boeing is working with ViaSat to provide an integrated satellite service to the U.S. Government customer. The customer retains the rights to use the service on Inmarsat 5 through September 30, 2015. This satellite, which entered service earlier this year, is the first of four Inmarsat-5 spacecraft being built by Boeing and is a part of Inmarsat’s Global Xpress® system, the world’s first globally available high-speed mobile broadband service for government and commercial users. Boeing is exclusively authorized to resell Inmarsat capacity to U.S. government organizations to help address increasing demand for military communications bandwidth. Leveraging Boeing’s expertise in government environments and applications, BCSS works with the owners of active satellite systems to market available bandwidth to prospective customers and to include hosted payloads on future spacecraft.
“The government continues to have an unmet demand for military satellite communications, and we believe that commercially available space assets can play a vital role in helping to meet this demand,” said Jim Mitchell, vice president of Boeing Commercial Satellite Services (BCSS). “Our mission is to identify and facilitate the use of available commercial communications capacity on behalf of U.S. government customers and allies.”
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