DirecTV will offer ViaSat’s Exede service and Hughes’ HughesNet Gen4 satellite broadband services to customers living in mostly unserved, rural areas later this year. The new offering will be coupled with triple-play packages from Verizon, AT&T, Century Link and other telco providers and provided at bundled pricing.

   “We look forward to offering every single DirecTV customer access to fast, affordable broadband options through DirecTV, no matter where they live,” DirecTV Senior Vice President of Emerging Markets Oswin Eleonora said in a statement. “With greatly improved capacity and speeds, satellite broadband services provided by ViaSat and Hughes will fully support our customers’ connected home experience, enabling them to access a host of features like YouTube, Pandora, social TV apps and more than 7,000 video-on-demand titles.”

   Dish Network has a similar deal with ViaSat, which allows it to offer data and video bundles with Exede via the ViaSat-1 satellite at about $80 per month. Dish’s sister company EchoStar acquired Hughes Network Systems for $1.3 billion in February 2011.