California-based broadband services and technology company ViaSat has set up a R&D centre here - its second facility outside the US - to tap the high-speed Internet connectivity potential in the region.
The research and development (R&D) centre, which now has about 40 people, would scale it up to 250 over the next three years, ViaSat India's Vice President Sathya Narayanaswamy said.
"There are about 40 employees. It will grow to 250 over the next three years. There is a huge growth market. There are about 13 crore Internet connections in India. It is nearly 10 per cent of the (total) population," he told reporters.
Listed on Nasdaq, a US stock exchange, the company currently serves seven lakh customers in North America and Canada through the ViaSat-1 highest capacity satellite launched in 2012.
The Chennai facility would be the global research and development centre and its second after the United Kingdom facility outside US.
"Our first facility outside United States is in United Kingdom. So this will be second largest R&D Centre for us", ViaSat Commercial Networks, Senior Vice-President, Kevin J Harkenrider said.
The company, however, declined to reveal the amount of the investments made at this centre.
He said the company planned to launch ViaSat-2 satellite broadband platform in 2017 that would more than double the bandwidth and increase coverage seven-fold over the prior generation.
"Now, we are planning to launch our second satellite ViaSat-1 by early 2017. It will be built by Boeing and will be launched from Ariane, French Guyana. That launch will help to us to cover across North America and across United Kingdom, Middle East and Africa", he said.
In 2019, ViaSat will launch first of three ViaSat-3 class satellite platforms that would offer 1,000 Gbps of network capacity, making each satellite equal to the total capacity of all commercial satellites in space.
The third satellite system was planned to cover Asia Pacific region completing the company's global coverage.
The company was in talks with the Ministry of Communications and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to launch their service in India, Harkenrider added.
