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Satellite Internet Will Not Solve the Digital Divide - Gizmodo

Satellite Internet Will Not Solve the Digital Divide - Gizmodo

Satellite Internet Will Not Solve the Digital Divide - Gizmodo
Oct 29, 2020 4 mins, 30 secs

Internet service providers will be vying for some of the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund today, including Elon Musks’s SpaceX.

A vast network of satellites that can provide uninterrupted, fast, and low latency internet access anywhere in the world is a cool idea.

Unfortunately, technological limitations and the cost of maintaining such a large network of satellites as Starlink means it’s more likely that those in the most need of internet still won’t have equally affordable and reliable access to it.

Yet it seems like the best hope for doing it sooner rather than later isn’t investing in Elon Musk’s latest venture, but a big combination of improving geosynchronous satellites like the existing HughesNet network, expanding wired and wireless broadband, and allowing municipal broadband to thrive in every state.

When 24% of people (about 14.4 million) living in rural America say access to high-speed internet is a problem, it’s easy to see how laying fiber throughout rural America could add up quickly.

Most of the cost of laying fiber or cable comes from digging trenches to lay the hardware itself, and there’s a lot more hardware involved to get wired broadband to rural areas.

Satellites, utilized by ISPs like HughesNet, are currently the most wide-spread way to provide rural America with internet.

Only there are inherent limitations to satellite internet, stark pros and cons compared to cable and fiber.

“Our purpose is to provide satellite internet where people cannot get it,” said Gulla.

We’re here to fill the gap and provide.” Satellite internet providers can go where other ISPs will not, but depending on the type of satellite internet customers will get mixed results in terms of speed, latency, and cost.

SpaceX and Starlink’s promise is based around the type of satellite it uses, which is very different from the kind HughesNet relies on.

Right now there are two types of satellites that provide internet across the globe: Geosynchronous (GEO) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

GEOs, like the satellites HughesNet uses for its internet infrastructure, match Earth’s rotation on its axis.

Because they are fixed, ISPs like HughesNet can aim them in a specific direction to cover a large area to provide uninterrupted service, as long they are not above or below approximately +/- 70 degrees latitude.

That means HughesNet needs fewer satellites to cover rural America in internet.

Because this type of satellite is constantly in motion, it can’t provide uninterrupted service to a single location.

That’s thousands of satellites all needed to provide a constant and stable internet connection—all at the cost of astronomy.

HughesNet uses just a handful of bus-sized satellites to deliver internet to rural areas, and the company plans to roll out a 100 Mbps service next year which could hopefully rival Starlink while keeping the number of satellites in orbit down.

Satellite internet is also generally slower and more expensive than wired broadband or DSL for the consumer.

“I would dare compare it to dial-up,” said Nicole, a rural Michigan resident and former HughesNet customer, about how slow her service was after using up her allotted data for the month.

Before they moved to where they live now, internet service was so bad they relied on their cell phones for access.

Customers on cable or fiber plans are usually allotted 1 TB of data per month, or unlimited for Spectrum customers, but streaming in SD via satellite means Nicole and her family are only able to watch two hours of SD videos a day on a single device, which puts them at 42 GB for the month—but doesn’t take into account video conferencing, emails, or anything else work or school related.

Nicole now has internet service through Agri-Valley Service (AVS), a local ISP that offers fixed 4G LTE wireless broadband, DSL broadband, and fiber.

The heavily wooded area where she and her family live blocks out much of the satellite signals, but with AVS she doesn’t have to worry about disruptions to her internet service, especially while her kids continue distance learning during the pandemic.

A few states away in a rural Upstate New York town—so remote that cell phone service is virtually non-existent—Nikki Wasielewski and her husband are also preparing to make the switch from HughesNet to a local broadband provider, which she says will solve all their problems. Solid internet is crucial for the two of them; Nikki manages online education for five nearby hospitals and her husband is an elementary school teacher, and they both have been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic.

If my internet service was faster, I could resolve their online issues sooner and help get staff out to do patient care.”.

Studies have shown municipal broadband would make reliable, fast internet accessible and affordable to rural communities, yet many states continue to roadblock those efforts in favor of keeping tiny monopolies across city and state lines between a handful of providers.

Satellite, whether from a bright new upstart like Starlink or an established player like HughesNet, is a stop-gap.

There are all areas where wired broadband is miles ahead of satellite internet.

Dense fiber barely exists for anyone in America, according to the government’s own data measuring network access deployment.” It’s ironic that the ISP’s own reluctance, even with federal dollars, to roll out broadband across the U.S.

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