Viasat Unleashed: Is This New Plan Right for You?

Think Starlink is the only good internet for folks off the beaten path? Elon Musk and his flashy internet offering have been making headlines for months, but legacy satellite internet provider Viasat is hot on his heels.

Today, Viasat announced a new one-size-fits-all monthly home internet plan that gets rid of contracts and strict data limits. Top speeds of 100Mbps may be available.

Prices for Viasat Unleashed start at $119 per month, depending on where you live.

How will Viasat Unleashed benefit customers?

Viasat Unleashed is a breath of fresh air for satellite internet users accustomed to strict data caps and contracts. Let’s dig into the details about what Unleashed customers can expect:

• Fast broadband speeds: Speeds up to 150Mbps, depending on location
• No contracts: No two-year agreements
• No strict data caps: No need to purchase extra priority data
• Professional installation: No-hassle installs, now free for credit-qualifying customers
• Affordable receivers and Wi-Fi gear: $15 monthly equipment lease (or $250 upfront)

Previously, Viasat customers had a choice of 12 different plans with a wide range of top speeds, from 12Mbps to 100Mbps. Most plans had limits on standard data, starting at a miserly 60GB per month. Customers had to pay for additional priority data if they exceeded their monthly caps, and they had to pay even more to get out of two-year plans. Viasat Unleashed is a distinct step away from that type of model.

How does Viasat Unleashed compare?

Satellite internet is best for homes that don’t have access to wired connections like cable, DSL, or fiber. Only a few companies compete against Viasat in this space. Here’s how they compare:

Hughesnet: Multiple plans are still a thing with Hughesnet, but you may be able to pay lower prices every month than with Viasat or Starlink. The cheapest Hughesnet plan gets you speeds up to 50Mbps for $49.99 per month, or you can pay $79.99 per month for speeds up to 100Mbps. Installation is free, but prices go up after one year, and a two-year contract is required. Research Hughesnet pricing.

Starlink: You can get a Starlink plan for $120 per month with speeds of 5–220Mbps, but you have to pay for all your gear up front at a cost of $599 (more if you want to roam or live somewhere with extreme weather). There’s no easy way to get professional installation, you can’t get priority data on a residential plan, and you may have to join a long wait list. Read more about Starlink plans and prices.

5G or 4G LTE home internet: Some homes can now get internet from mobile phone providers like T-Mobile and Verizon. The big caveat is that if you can’t get cell service at your house, you can’t get this either. If you do have good cell coverage, you could get home internet plus Wi-Fi for a flat rate of $35–$50 per month (on top of your mobile phone bill).

Viasat can’t compete with most cable and fiber internet plans when it comes to price, speed, and latency. However, not all homes can get fully wired connections. Viasat’s simplified plan structure isn’t right for everyone, but it may be the perfect solution for your internet needs.

Find out how much internet speed you need.

What else you need to know about Viasat Unleashed

A few unknowns

The Viasat Unleashed plan for home internet is brand new, so that means we’re still waiting on a few specifics. For instance, we don’t know whether the monthly price of $99.99–$199.99 is subject to future price increases. We also don’t know specifics about which Wi-Fi gear will be available or what the transition will be like for current Viasat customers who are still under contract.

We also haven’t heard all the pricing details about how the Unleashed plan will work with TV and Voice bundles from Viasat. We do know that Voice plans, like home internet, will no longer have term contracts.

Data throttling in the fine print

In the fine print about data caps, Viasat mentions a soft cap of 850GB on priority data. If you use more than 850GB in any 30-day period, according to the company, your speeds could be throttled during periods of heavy network congestion.

Hughesnet also advertises unlimited standard data but has strict limits on priority data. That means your fast speeds could slow to a crawl after you use either 100GB or 200GB every month. Starlink, on the other hand, doesn’t offer any priority data on standard residential plans. The big difference is that when we tested Hughesnet standard data, even priority speeds were very slow (below 25Mbps). When Starlink beta-tested its speeds, results showed between 50 and 150Mbps, which is much more usable for the everyday customer.

For a little more context, many cable internet providers still impose data caps. They usually offer 1,000GB (1TB) or 1,200GB (1.2TB) per month, so a little more than what Viasat is offering.

Though 850GB is enough data for the average household, data usage is still something to keep an eye on if you transfer a lot of large files or download massive games on the regular. Find out how much data you need.

Location-based speeds

In some areas, new Viasat Unleashed customers will get speeds up to 150Mbps. That’s faster than some cable internet plans and a lot better than most DSL plans. In other areas, though, top speeds from Viasat Unleashed could be 50Mbps.

Read our expert Viasat review for more details.

What’s next for Viasat?

The new Unleashed offering from Viasat seems to be a sign the provider is growing its capacity. That’s in line with Viasat’s long-term expansion plans. However, those plans hit a big snag when the first of Viasat’s three enormous ViaSat-3 satellites failed to deploy properly after it was launched into space in May of 2023.

Months after the catastrophic mechanical failure occurred, the company announced it expects less than 10% of planned throughput on the broken satellite. However, it received a $420 million insurance payout and expects to launch two other ViaSat 3 generation satellites soon. There are also ground network mitigations and third-party bandwidth commitments in the works, Viasat told investors.

At HighSpeedInternet.com, our expert team thinks Viasat has a good chance of providing speeds in the 100Mbps range for its Unleashed customers, and we like the simplified plan structure. We’ll keep an eye out for additional details about the new plans and report the latest from our proprietary Viasat speed test as soon as we have reliable data.

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