Photo: Viasat.

Viasat announced it will offer a satellite-enabled Wi-Fi hotspot service known as Community Wi-Fi to nearly all of Mexico. The new service will bring an affordable Wi-Fi experience directly to consumer’s devices, in places where internet service has historically been unavailable or unusable. According to Viasat, the service can be deployed with minimal local infrastructure investment.

Since April 2016, Viasat has been conducting Community Wi-Fi trials at nearly 500 sites throughout Northern Mexico using its existing satellites and Wi-Fi technologies. Today, these deployments cover hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens, where internet service was unavailable prior. With the increase in ViaSat 2 satellite capacity and coverage, the company expects to extend its reach to millions of people in unconnected towns across Mexico. Viasat launched its commercial service in Mexico with Grupo Prosperist, a local telecommunications and technology service provider.

In 2014, Viasat also acquired managed Wi-Fi provider NetNearU, which had successfully managed 14 million hotspots as well as operated a managed hotspot network in nearly 30 countries. With this expertise in-house, Viasat intends to grow its number of subscribers within emerging residential markets to enterprises and commercial aviation.