When we think of broadband, we usually see cables, like fibre running through the ground or copper lines going up utility poles. But what if you live in a place where cables can’t easily get to you, like a remote farm, a small village or a boat in the middle of the ocean?
That’s where satellite broadband comes in. This technology has been stuck with slow, unreliable speeds for a long time, but it is changing a lot thanks to groups of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. This new era of satellite internet could change the world by connecting the last billion people.
But, like any new technology, it has its own pros and cons that both businesses and consumers need to know about before they stop using traditional service.
The Pros: Unlocking The Untouchable
The main benefit of new satellite broadband technologies like Starlink and OneWeb is that they can get around land-based infrastructure.
Universal Availability
- Reach the Unreachable: This is the clear winner in the world of satellite broadband. Installing fibre and cable is not cost-effective in many rural, mountainous or island areas. Satellite service is available wherever a dish can see the sky. This will change things for developing economies, industries that are far away (like mining and agriculture) and disaster relief efforts where ground infrastructure is destroyed.
- Mobility: More and more, new satellite systems are making it easier to move around. Think of aeroplanes, RVs and commercial ships. This gives you access to the whole world, which is necessary for modern transportation and logistics.
- The LEO Revolution: High Speed Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, which are 22,000 miles away, were used for traditional satellite internet. This distance made latency (lag) very bad. New LEO constellations go around the Earth at a distance of only 300 to 1,200 miles. This shorter distance cuts latency by a huge amount, making video calls, gaming and other real-time apps possible, which they weren’t before.
- Competitive Download Speeds: LEO networks can offer download speeds that are as fast as or even faster than older technologies like DSL or rural cable. They can often reach speeds of over 100 Mbps, which makes them a true broadband solution.
Rapid Deployment
Fast Setup: Fibre can take years and millions of dollars to set up across a region, but satellite service only needs a few pieces of ground infrastructure: the gateway station and the user’s terminal (the dish). A remote user can get their hardware and be online in a few minutes, which meets their immediate connectivity needs.
The Cons: Challenges Of The Celestial Web
There are a lot of problems with satellite broadband that make it not a perfect replacement for high-density fibre service, even though people talk about it a lot.
Initial And Ongoing Cost
- Price of Equipment: The user terminal (dish and router) is complicated technology that often costs a lot of money up front (for example, several hundred dollars), while installing regular cable or fibre costs almost nothing. This price is too high for people in rural areas with low incomes, who are the ones who need the service the most.
- Monthly subscription fees: These fees for satellite service are often higher than those for similar fibre plans on the ground. This makes satellite service a premium option rather than an affordable alternative.
Physical And Environmental Factors
- Weather Interference: Satellite signals can be affected by “rain fade,” which means that heavy rain, snow or thick clouds can make the connection much worse or even stop it completely. The small dishes that LEO services use may be more likely to pick up this interference than the big commercial dishes that GEO networks use.
- Requirements for Line of Sight: The dish needs to be able to see the sky clearly without anything in the way. The signal can be easily blocked by trees, tall buildings or mountains, which makes it hard to install in areas with a lot of trees or buildings.
- Congestion: When more people in a certain cell or geographic area sign up, they have to share the available bandwidth. During busy times, this can slow things down, especially in places with a lot of users.
The Latency Trade-off
Still More Than Fibre: LEO has greatly reduced latency compared to GEO, but it still can’t beat fibre. The latency of fibre is usually less than 10 milliseconds (ms). LEO latency is usually between 25 and 50 ms. This difference doesn’t matter for video calls, but it can matter for ultra-low-latency apps like competitive trading or fast-paced online gaming.
