Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through communication satellites; if it can sustain high speeds, it is termed satellite broadband. Modern consumer grade satellite Internet service is typically provided to individual users through geostationary satellites that can offer relatively high data speeds, with newer satellites using the Ku band to achieve downstream data speeds up to 506 Mbit/s. In addition, new satellite internet constellations are being developed in low-earth orbit to enable low-latency internet access from space.
History Following the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union in October 1957, the US successfully launched the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958. The first commercial communications satellite was Telstar 1, built by Bell Labs and launched in July 1962. The idea of a geosynchronous satellite—one that could orbit the Earth above the equator and remain fixed by following the Earth's rotation—was first proposed by Herman Potočnik in 1928 and popularised by the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in a paper in Wireless World in 1945. The first satellite to successfully reach geostationary orbit was Syncom3, built by Hughes Aircraft for NASA and launched on August 19, 1963. Succeeding generations of communications satellites featuring larger capacities and improved performance characteristics were adopted for use in television delivery, military applications and telecommunications purposes. Following the invention of the Internet and the World Wide Web, geostationary satellites attracted interest as a potential means of providing Internet access. A significant enabler of satellite-delivered Internet has been the opening up of the Ka band for satellites. In December 1993, Hughes Aircraft Co. filed with the Federal Communications Commission for a license to launch the first Ka-band satellite, Spaceway. In 1995, the FCC issued a call for more Ka-band satellite applications, attracting applications from 15 companies. Among those were EchoStar, Lockheed Martin, GE-Americom, Motorola and KaStar Satellite, which later became WildBlue, which then became Viasat. Among prominent aspirants in the early-stage satellite Internet sector was Teledesic, an ambitious and ultimately failed project funded in part by Microsoft that ended up costing more than $9 billion. Teledesic's idea was to create a satellite Internet constellation of hundreds of low-orbiting satellites in the Ka-band frequency, providing inexpensive Internet access with download speeds of up to 720 Mbit/s. However, the project was abandoned in 2003. Teledesic's failure, coupled with the bankruptcy filings of the satellite communications providers Iridium Communications Inc. and Globalstar, dampened marketplace enthusiasm for satellite Internet development. The first Internet-ready satellite for consumers was launched in September 2003. In 2004, with the launch of Anik F2, the first high-throughput satellite, a class of next-generation satellites providing improved capacity and bandwidth became operational. More recently, high throughput satellites such as ViaSat's ViaSat-1 satellite in 2011 and HughesNet's Jupiter in 2012 have achieved further improvements, elevating downstream data rates from 1 to 3 Mbit/s up to 12 to 15 Mbit/s and beyond. Internet access services tied to these satellites are targeted largely to rural residents as an alternative to Internet service via dial-up, ADSL or classic FSSes. In 2013, the first four satellites of the O3b constellation were launched into medium Earth orbit (MEO) to provide internet access to the "other three billion" people without stable internet access at that time. Over the next six years, 16 further satellites joined the constellation, now owned and operated by SES. Since 2014, a rising number of companies announced working on internet access using satellite constellations in low Earth orbit. SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon all planned to launch more than 1000 satellites each. OneWeb alone raised $1.7 billion by February 2017 for the project, and SpaceX raised over one billion in the first half of 2019 for their service called Starlink. They expected more than $30 billion in revenue by 2025 from its satellite constellation. Starlink, as of February 2024, has 5,402 operational satellites in orbit. Many planned constellations employ laser communication for inter-satellite links to effectively create a space-based internet backbone. As of 2017, airlines such as Delta and American have been introducing satellite internet as a means of combating limited bandwidth on airplanes and offering passengers usable internet speeds. In September 2017, SES announced the next generation of O3b satellites and service, named O3b mPOWER, a constellation of seven MEO satellites to deliver 10 terabits of capacity globally through 30,000 spot beams for broadband internet services. The number of O3b mPOWER satellites ordered was subsequently increased to 11 and then 13, and on 16 December 2022, the first two O3b mPOWER satellites were successfully launched, with four more in 2023, and the service began operations alongside the existing O3b constellation in April 2024. Two further satellites have since joined the constellation, launched in 2024 Consumers experienced performance increases in the 2020s, largely based on the decision of services like Starlink to deploy satellites at the low earth orbit level, which allowed for much lower latency than internet satellites deployed at the geostationary level, as they traditionally were.
Companies and market
United States As of 2024, companies providing home internet service in the United States via satellite included ViaSat, through its Exede brand, EchoStar, through subsidiary HughesNet, Starlink, and Amazon Leo. Operators of non-geostationary satellite internet constellations must demonstrate compliance with equivalent power flux density (EPFD) limits established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
European Union The EU plans to commence the IRIS² project in the 2020s.
China As of 2023, China is in the process of developing its own, state-owned, satellite internet constellation, run by Chinasat.
India As of 2023, India’s main offerings in the space were Oneweb and JioSpaceFiber, with the country considering licenses for Starlink and Project Kuiper.
Function
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