As the world shifts online for more and more activities, there’s an increased demand for high-speed internet. Numerous nations are bracing themselves for the rollout of 5G in the recent future and it found a special mention in this year’s Union Budget as well. The market for high-speed internet seems optimistic.

There’s no better time than now to utilize the internet to its full capacity. When we talk about advancing, then we cannot keep space-tech out of the conversation. Lately, it has been ruling in all possible avenues, ranging from climate forecast to data collection.

Now, it may rule as the internet provider too, in areas where fiber cables cannot go.

What Is Satellite Internet?

Through satellite internet, one wirelessly beams down the internet from those satellites orbiting the earth. There are hundreds of satellites orbiting the earth of various space institutions and their technology can be leveraged to provide internet on Earth.

Data travels from our modem to the satellite to the ground-network stations and back via the same route

It is a lot different than a normal fiber connection, which transfers data from your network provider to you via wires. These wire-based connections cannot reach everywhere. It requires tremendous capital investment to lay down a network of fibers in every area.

At such places, people always suffer due to lack of connectivity, and thus, satellite internet is used to provide internet. These include hilly regions and remote villages and islands. It can provide a speed of up to 100 Mbps.

It is not something novel. It has been in use for quite some time now for military applications. However, its potential in the commercial market is untapped, which is why telecom companies are jumping at the chance of commercializing this for profits.


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Telecom Companies Operating In Satellite Internet Arena

Recently, Reliance’s Jio Platform has partnered with a European broadband company based on satellite internet called SES. SES operates 70 satellites already. Jio has the largest market share in the broadband connection and telecom sector in India, and it is expanding its services to cater to a larger audience.

Bharti Airtel’s OneWeb and Elon Musk’s Starlink are already major players in this field. OneWeb has ambitious plans to launch 648 satellites. Starlink aims to launch over 42,000 more in the coming decade.

Jio with SES aims to use GEO (geostationary) and MEO (medium earth orbit) satellites. They are large in size, situated at higher altitudes, and are more expensive. One such satellite covers a larger area compared to LEO (low earth orbit) satellites which are deployed by OneWeb and Starlink.

LEOs offer an advantage in that they orbit at a higher pace, thus can provide more global coverage. However, they need a satellite constellation network to offer a wide coverage.

Drawbacks

Satellite internet has a higher latency and can be as high as 600 ms. It is the time taken by the data to travel from your device to the satellite and back to your device. It makes it slow and unrequited for applications requiring fast speed like gaming.

The bandwidth offered is also low compared to the normal fiber cable connections. Bandwidth is how many devices can connect to the same network at a given time.

Moreover, it is more severely affected by weather conditions. Troubleshooting can be tricky for technologically challenged people as it requires more specialized knowledge.

For these reasons, the penetration to home networks is still low, but continuous efforts are being made to improve upon these drawbacks and fully leverage the potential of this technology. In fact, Starlink has activated satellite internet service in a war-hit Ukraine to overcome the barriers that normal wired internet connections have.

satellite internet
Starlink to provide internet in war-hit Ukraine

They are easy to deploy and can be reached everywhere. It wouldn’t be surprising if the concept of broadband cable connection goes extinct in a few decades and the world’s internet is powered by satellites only.


Disclaimer: This article is fact-checked

Sources: LiveMint, Indian Express, Business World +more

Find The Blogger: @TinaGarg18

This post is tagged under: high-speed internet, bandwidth, satellite, jio network, bharti airtel, elon musk, SES, OneWeb, Bharti airtel, elon musk, spaceX, starlink, GEO satellites, low earth orbit satellites, high earth orbit, HEO, LEO, bandwidth, latency, speed, troubleshoot, internet in remote areas, ukraine to have satellite internet

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