Signal from out there
The upgrade of satellite broadband could turn out to be a game-changer, writes David Behrens.
We take broadband for granted these days, until the morning it’s not there. It’s only then that the degree to which we rely on it for even the most mundane tasks becomes apparent. It’s bad enough when the outage is relatively brief, but for many in rural areas especially, the provision of stable, alwayson internet remains a pipe dream.
This year’s boom in summer staycations opened the eyes of a few city dwellers to the problems as they pitched up in the countryside to discover that their phones and laptops would not connect. And those with holiday homes in the region’s many caravan parks will be all too familiar with the problems of getting a signal from one end of the field to another.
But when there is neither a mobile signal nor wi-fi network to hand, there is sometimes a third option. Satellite broadband has been around for a few years now but the nature of its infrastructure – no national network but a few small companies serving discrete areas – has made it something of a Cinderella option. That’s about to change.
The technology is similar to Sky TV, in that the internet connection is delivered to you via satellites orbiting the Earth.
That means a lack of population is no impediment to coverage. But you can’t use your existing Sky dish for broadband, too; you’ll need a second one for that purpose.
The impediment you will find is the likely absence of a contractor offering the service in your area. Currently only a handful of operators are dotted around
Yorkshire and all handle decidedly niche areas. Some specialise in just educational or commercial installations.
But if you’re lucky, you might find that your home, or holiday home, is smack in the middle of one of these areas – in which case you can sign up for reliable and relatively fast broadband for around the same price as conventional, wired access. Wisper Broadband, which covers parts of
Hull and the East Riding, including at least one large holiday park, offers weekly deals as well as monthly contracts.
The UK Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, which represents several dozen suppliers, has a coverage map at its website, ukwispa.org.
Yet wireless internet such as this will ultimately be part of the communications past, not the future, for the connectivity is limited by the incapacity of radio waves to carry the signal any faster than conventional broadband. As the roll-out of full-fibre connections accelerates through this decade, it will be left far behind.
It will be for the next generation of satellite suppliers to address this, and they will be of a very different breed from today’s patchwork of local suppliers. The controversial American buccaneer Elon Musk, for instance, is behind Starlink, which harnesses lasers to deliver broadband around six times as fast as older satellite systems. It will soon be widely available across the UK and, although setup costs will be high for early adopters, they will fall over time. This may be the goto service for remote communities in the future. Those who have connected to it so far have reported seeing a 160-fold increase in speed, albeit from a very low base.
It already has a rival, in the form of OneWeb, a government-backed venture that aims to create its own orbiting broadband network – though when or whether that will fly remains unclear.
All of which means that, while broadband by satellite remains a speciality service at the moment, it won’t be long before it takes off in a whole new way.
Those who have connected to it have reported seeing a 160fold increase in speed.