The Wildblue-1 satellite has been delivered to the Arianespace spaceport in French Guiana in advanced of its scheduled launch in early December, a move that Wildblue Communications Inc. hopes will help it meet the growing demand for its satellite broadband service.

Wildblue-1, built by Space Systems/Loral, is expected to help Wildblue triple its customer capacity throughout the rural United States. "We have dealers with waiting lists of customers raring to go," said Brad Greenwald, Wildblue’s vice president of sales and marketing.

While focused on providing subscriptions to homes and offices in low-density areas and small towns throughout the United States, "we’re adding well over 10,000 customers a month, and we are excited to expand that activity" through Wildblue-1, Greenwald said.

Wildblue’s two-way wireless service provides high-speed data service with access speeds comparable to DSL and cable modem services. Customers use a small satellite dish utilizing both a transmitter and receiver for two-way connectivity. Based on the cable industry’s data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) technology, the company can leverage existing hardware and chipsets.

The company currently provides service using capacity aboard Telesat Canada’s Anik F2 satellite. But Wildblue’s ability to provide service has been contrained, with some of the spotbeams aboard Anik F2 operating at their capacity because of the nature of providing satellite broadband service.

"Each of our satellites has a finite capacity with a two-way data set," Greenwald explained, "unlike Dish Network, where it doesn’t matter whether you have one or a million customers decoding it, you have each subscriber asking for its own capacity."

He declined to specify how much capacity is required.

Wildblue-1 will be the first commercial all Ka-band satellite, taking advantage of a different portion of the radio spectrum with substantially more capacity than is available in the more common Ku-band frequency. The satellite, based on Space Systems/Loral’s 1300 platform, will cover North America with 41 overlapping spot beams, while eight onboard tracking antennas will provide precision pointing from its orbital location at 109.2 degrees West.

"The focus is that the spotbeam capability provides us with the affordable, residential service our subscribers are looking for," Greenwald said. "Ka-band is the only way, really, to afford residential service. Distribution in another spectrum is much higher [in cost per user, whereas] the spotbeams are optimized for satellite Internet traffic."

Wildblue is likely to add satellites in the future, Greenwald said. While the company is "open for whatever is an option," the lack of existing Ka-band capacity otherwise leaves them looking to address expanding it.

"There are no issues other than a ton of demand, so we’re offering whatever and however we can," Greenwald said. "… We’re always looking for more capacity, so we’re looking to see how to augment it. With our recently announced distribution deals with Echostar, DirecTV and AT&T, we’re looking to keep adding users."

In September, Wildblue announced a national advertising campaign with the Dallas-based Richards Group to support its affiliated satellite broadband dealers across the United States.

Of course, the idea is not simply to support its dealers’ acquisition activities, but also build awareness of Wildblue’s brand among targeted "consumers who embrace the rural lifestyle."

With a slogan airily reminiscent of a virtually enlightened Marlboro Man, an old cigarette advertising icon, the ads welcome consumers to "Wildblue Country," where affordable high-speed Internet is available anywhere.

The campaign continues through December in national publications including Country Living, Country Weekly, Field and Stream, Hobby Farms, Outdoor Life, Progressive Farmer, Farm Journal and Rural Life.