Commercial aircraft Wi-Fi. Photo: MultiVu.

The United States Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) officially awarded global communications company Viasat an eight-year, firm-fixed price contract to provide U.S. government senior leader and VIP aircraft with in-flight broadband and connectivity services. The base year award value is $55.6 million. The period of performance for the base year award is Sept. 1, 2018, through Aug. 31, 2019. The base year and seven 12-month option periods have a total cumulative value of $559.8 million.

Over the past two and a half years, Viasat has provided in-flight broadband and connectivity services to senior leader aircraft under the AMSS IIa contract. Building on the initial contract phase, and leveraging Viasat’s continuous improvement, continuous development model, this new contract enables Viasat to provide even more advanced broadband connectivity service options with expanded coverage and increased data rates, as well as enhanced security, resiliency, and flexibility.

Viasat’s Hybrid Adaptive Network (HAN) uses hybrid terminal technology to enable automatic and rapid in-flight network switching across Ku- and Ka-band satellite networks, as well as multiple orbital regimes for optimized global roaming connectivity. In addition, the HAN leverages Viasat’s latest innovations in layered resilience to mitigate against congestion, intentional and unintentional interference sources and rapidly evolving cyber threats in highly contested environments. The HAN is unique to Viasat and not offered by any other service provider today, according to the release.