As read on www.skyreport.com

WildBlue said Arianespace has scheduled the launch of its first wholly-owned Ka-Band spot beam satellite, WildBlue 1, on an Ariane 5 vehicle for sometime in the fourth quarter. The flight will take place from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

WildBlue-1, manufactured by Space Systems/Loral, will help the company nearly triple its customer capacity and is expected to handle WildBlue's continuing rapid customer growth into 2008 and beyond. WildBlue said if the launch is successful, service to customers via WildBlue-1 could commence in January 2007.

At the moment, WildBlue utilizes Ka-Band spot beam capacity on Telesat Canada's Anik F2 satellite, which was launched by Arianespace in July 2004.

WildBlue also said it contracted Andrew Corporation to build two new spot beam gateways and augment existing U.S. gateways. In addition, the company said it has exercised an agreement with Viasat to deliver the equipment necessary to serve the added customers via the additional gateways.