The Rural Mobile and Broadband Alliance is an advocacy group with a range of rural broadband service members, including ISPs and municipalities. But one type of company you’re unlikely to see joining the group any time soon is satellite providers.
RuMBA last week issued a white paper questioning the viability of relying on satellite Internet to provide broadband connectivity for unserved or underserved rural areas. The paper raises several concerns that we hear quite frequently about satellite services—including relatively low bandwidth, susceptibility to weather conditions and high latency. But it also brings up some issues that have not been so well recognized—such as satellite operators’ policy of putting daily caps on broadband usage which, the author says, effectively prevent the use of satellite downloads for streaming full-length movies, among other things.
The paper argues passionately for the need to bring broadband services to rural areas that are comparable to what most Americans have. “No longer a mere inconvenience, lack of access to broadband now constitutes a potential death sentence for rural communities thus afflicted,” the author writes.
The major problem with the paper, however, is that it makes no recognition of the fact that the major satellite operators soon plan to launch higher-capacity satellites, which they claim will provide greater bandwidth. The satellite operators say they have also taken steps to minimize the impact of latency.
Perhaps some of these claims could be disputed. For example, perhaps the expanded capacity will enable satellite operators to remove or adjust the daily cap, but they might find they need to re-instate the cap as demand grows.
But not to recognize the new satellite developments at all is a serious flaw.
Joan — Thank you so much for reporting on the RuMBA whitepaper, of which I am the author. You raise an interesting question and I did consider reporting the potential for future improvements in satellite technology. However, 3 things led me to leave out this part of the story:
1. Until these promised improvements arrive they essentially don’t exist. I would love to see improvements in the cap and the latency, but they are not here yet, and their cost, when they do arrive, is unclear. Communities debating how to proceed with broadband need access now and they need comparative budget numbers.
2. Current satellite caps are lower than the average monthly broadband consumption last year (according to Cisco’s report last October). At the current growth rate that monthly average will be 20 gigabytes by this coming October, and 30% more each year for some time to come. It is not clear that even the next generation of satellites will match that, whereas regular cable/fiber/DSL can already meet current and anticipated demand.
3. As far as I can determine, not even the satellite companies envision their best technology supporting things like data centers or video editing companies, or any number of really high bandwidth enterprises that could be located in rural areas if broadband existed there.
People who live in truly remote areas may never have that kind of connectivity, but there are thousands of communities that have telephone and electric service and could get wired broadband much cheaper than satellite.
Examples are popping up all the time where a small town has created a cooperative and run fiber to the home/farm/school/clinic delivering far higher speed and capacity than you can currently get with satellite, at lower monthly prices. For communities still trying to decide what to do about broadband access, in the absence of interest from the big cable and phone companies, this whitepaper just lays out the current status of satellite so they can weigh this option against fiber, DSL, cable, and wireless options.
Thanks again for bringing this topic to light.
Stephen Cobb
STEPHEN-
You raise some good points. Thanks for reading and for the additional input.
Now why am I supposed to increase my subsidy of your living arrangements? If you want to live in bucolic surroundings the lack of urban broadband services is a tradeoff. I subsidize your telephone and your electricity. I subsidize your transportation infrastructure.
In the material issued by the FCC for comment there is stated the possiblibty that (If reverse autions are used << which in itself would be a disaster for rural america) if a wireless ISP wins the bid they will be permitted to use satellite service for the difficult to serve customers. Here in Nebraska where 96% of the population has access to broadband Internet Access while not using satellite Internet Access I get complaints from most of the customers in the remaining 4% that satellite Internet Access is not suitable for running a business or even just working from home a day a week or a few hours in the evening. If wireless access is used there will be 10s of thousands of customers that will not be served because of the terrain in Nebraska which is a relatively flat state. You look at the cellular coverage maps and you would think that 99% of the rural (City is a given) customers can get cellular service – WRONG! From experience trying to use a cellular device while traveling in about 60% of the state your connection will be dropped about 6 to 10 times in an average 100 mile trip because of the terain – and the cellular towers are quite numerous. If a wireless Internet Service provider wins the aution in this 60% of the state I can almost guaranttee you that they will be requesting to serve about 20 to 30 percent of the rural customers by satellite – – then we WILL have created a PERMANENT DIGITAL DIVIDE! I think that for a winning bid wireless ISP to be allowed to use satellite to serve some customers the requirement should be that any such customer has to live at least ten miles in any direction from the next adjacent customer or potential customer. We can not allow the character of the terain to be any part of the criteria for relegating a customer to satellite Internet Access. Distance as the criteria – yes – as in the ranching areas there are customers as far as 60 to 70 miles from their serving telephone switch and up to 30 to 40 miles from the next closest customer.