Two very different technologies
Traditional satellite internet uses a small number of satellites in geostationary orbit, roughly 22,000 miles up. At that distance the signal takes about a quarter of a second to reach the satellite and the same to come back, which puts a hard floor of around half a second on every request you make. Nothing can engineer that away; it is the speed of light over the distance involved.
Newer services use thousands of satellites in low earth orbit, a few hundred miles up. The round trip is far shorter, so latency drops into the range of a decent wired connection. That is the difference between a link on which video calls are painful and one on which they simply work.
| Geostationary | Low earth orbit | |
|---|---|---|
| Latency | ~600 ms | 25 – 60 ms |
| Download | 25 – 100 Mbps | 50 – 250 Mbps |
| Video calls | Difficult | Works well |
| Online gaming | Not viable | Generally fine |
| Equipment cost | Low or leased | Higher upfront |
| Monthly cost | Lower | Higher |
When satellite is the right answer
Satellite is a considered choice when no wired option reaches you and fixed wireless does not either. It is rarely the best connection available — it is the connection that is available. If cable, fiber or a decent fixed wireless service reaches your address, take that instead.
- Remote or rural properties with no wired infrastructure.
- Homes where DSL is too slow to be usable and nothing else has arrived.
- Temporary or seasonal properties where installing a line makes no sense.
- A backup connection where an outage would be genuinely costly.
Practicalities worth knowing
- You need a clear view of the sky in the right direction. Trees and hills genuinely prevent service.
- Heavy rain and snow can interrupt the signal, more noticeably on geostationary systems.
- Snow accumulating on the dish is a real cause of outages in cold climates; some equipment can melt it.
- Data policies vary. Many plans reduce speed after a threshold rather than charging overage.
- Equipment may be purchased or leased — check which, and what happens to it if you cancel.