In February 1999 Inmarsat Holdings acquired the VSAT operations of EAE, of Aberdeen, Scotland, placing them in a new wholly owned subsidiary, INVSAT.

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At the time of its launch in October 2011 by ViaSat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT), ViaSat-1 had more capacity than all of the other communication satellites covering North America combined.

ENGADGET: ViaSat snags Guinness World Record for highest-capacity satellite

As in Kathmandu in February 2005, when Nepal's King Gyanendra seized absolute power and cut most international communications, UN offices, with their own dedicated VSAT links, offered one of the few connections to the outside world.

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ViaSat ( VSAT - news - people ), which makes and services satellite equipment and data networks, hiring never stopped during the recession, in part because the firm has a big, steady client, the U.S. military, which is using ViaSat equipment in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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