The view was surreal — like something out of Star Wars. While in the middle of No-Man's-Land, South Dakota, on our way back from visiting my husband's family, we noticed satellites overhead — their long angled wings and flashing lights — moving like distant starships in the night sky.
On the surface, satellite broadband really does look like something from a futuristic tale, but it's hardly the broadband of the future. It may offer benefits today, but those benefits will quickly expire as newer technologies continue to demand higher speeds. To keep up, satellite providers will need to launch more satellites with updated capabilities, which come with billion-dollar price tags.
In the long term, satellites will likely never meet our broadband needs, but we can use them strategically to get more of the hardest-to-reach people connected sooner.
What Satellite Offers to Those Who Need It
Don't get me wrong: Satellite broadband stands to benefit many users around the world. Starlink satellites allowed people in remote regions of Ukraine to defend themselves against Russian cyberattacks. In 2024, Astranis will launch satellites to connect 2 million people in the Philippines without high-speed internet access. Satellite service can benefit countries in Sub-Saharan Africa where smaller populations and current infrastructure would make deployment of direct line connections highly cost-ineffective. Public funding may one day become available or private funding may one day decide that those investments make financial sense, but satellite can bring access to those areas while they wait.
Satellite can also provide everyday connectivity across the U.S. for digital nomads, a population that has more than doubled since COVID drove remote work popularity. I see many younger adults in my children's generation truly embracing the concept of work-from-anywhere because satellite makes that lifestyle more possible than ever. I used it myself to catch up on work while my husband drove our travel van back home from trips to Texas and North Carolina.
While satellite should never be the sole provider of broadband services in a U.S. community — which I'll address shortly — I may recommend it to particular users within that community. Some unserved or underserved off-grid regions with low population densities may want to consider satellite broadband where alternative options are limited.
Federal broadband funds from the 2021 infrastructure bill may take another couple of years to hit the ground, and satellite may offer adequate service for limited users within an area until states have that money to start building out direct lines. In these cases, satellite broadband can leapfrog those households from their current experience to a better one.
Where Satellite Falls Short
For a small ranch 20 miles from another living person, satellite might be the most cost-effective broadband option. As the only individual in town accessing a satellite's service, it offers a lot of capability. Starlink says it offers download speeds up to 220 Mbps and upload speeds up to 20 Mbps, comparable to what they might get with DSL or cable. But like cable, satellite networks are shared, meaning performance may decline during peak usage. As homes and businesses introduce more people streaming, gaming, or downloading files, suddenly, that service is not so speedy.
The number of community members who have access to satellite broadband need to be few to keep the performance of that service high. When we lost cell service in the Smoky Mountains over Memorial Day weekend, we could still rely on satellite. Still, with so many others connected and working from the road, that service was recognizably slower than our direct connections at home. In rural areas of Texas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin, residents who turned to Starlink as a broadband solution are starting to worry that congestion in their service is slowing it down to a crawl, making it impossible to do work in the digital age.
The True Cost Comes Down the Line
For now, satellite is a cheaper option for rural areas and markets outside the U.S. with little to no existing infrastructure, but for everyone else, it isn't a viable long-term solution. Cities generally have better infrastructure and more competitive broadband options, making it harder for satellite companies to compete.
Fiber, for example, offers a dedicated line with limitless bandwidth, while satellite is incapable of ever achieving full gigabit service; it offers what it offers and will never get better. Passing every home with fiber has an exponentially lower cost than connecting them.
Still, much of the massive initial overhead to build and launch a satellite is behind us, which is why fixed overhead per user is pretty low today. But designing, building, and launching an entirely new satellite with upgraded capabilities will require a monumental investment that, eventually, satellite providers will need to make.
To keep service costs low enough to be a better value while still providing high enough bandwidth, providers would need to launch more satellites to prevent the overuse of what a single satellite can offer, raising the company's overhead. To balance those costs, they would need more users to sign up, reducing performance. More satellites also increase the risk of collisions and debris that could interfere with NASA programs or cause costly damage to other satellites. Satellite broadband may offer some short-term solutions, but I have yet to see a viable business model for large-scale satellite deployment.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to capability, fiber and satellite are on polar opposite sides of the scale, and this is where technology is headed. Entertainment streaming, remote work and learning, VR/AR, and AI are increasing the average household bandwidth needs. As new ways to take greater advantage of the speeds and capacity of fiber develop, staying competitive will depend on leveraging those technologies.
The "haves" will become more competitive while the "have nots" with the limited speeds of satellite fall behind yet another digital divide. While we should embrace satellite technology for what it offers today, instead of banking on it being a forever solution, we need to go into it fully aware of what it is — a temporary fix.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
