The Limited Role of Space-based Internet in Our Daily Digital Life

Unless you yourself have a satellite terminal, it is very unlikely that any of your Internet traffic travels to a satellite. Satellite Internet is best suited for mobility and connecting places that are difficult to cable. Mostly, the Internet is wired or fiber because it is cheaper and holds a lot of capacity. However, the overall contribution of satellites to our daily Internet usage is minimal.

Only a Negligible Quantity

Fiber coax and even copper pairs are superior in terms of transmission rates and cost. To give you a better understanding, you can look at the traffic levels of satellite ISPs to estimate this or the rankings of their autonomous systems, their layer-3 IP backbones. SES ASTRA S.A., ranked 2319, ViaSat Inc., ranked 6867, and Hughes Network Systems, ranked 17727, together have 2003856 addresses in their ‘customer cones.’ This is a much smaller number when compared to the largest ISP, Level 3, which has 1838384467 addresses in its customer cone.

Traffic Volumes and Scalability

The largest satellite ISPs’ reach is effectively just 1/100th of 1% of the reach of the largest ISP. For reference, ViaSat’s “ViaSat-3” constellation is expected to support only 3 Tbps of traffic once the three 'birds' are launched in 2022. In comparison, Level 3 alone supported 42 Tbps of traffic back in 2016. Note that this may include MPLS and Ethernet traffic if not also layer-1 traffic in addition to layer-3 Internet traffic.

Cost and Latency Issues

Satellite Internet is expensive and has high latency, which for most uses equates to slow performance. People use satellite Internet to get connected in places where there is no good alternative, such as remote areas where the only option might be a slow, unreliable broadband service. It is unlikely that any service you connect to using terrestrial broadband would involve a satellite at any point beyond your local telephone exchange or cell tower.

Terrestrial Internet Dominance

As an example, a colleague of the author had a 2Mbps “broadband” service, which was the best they could get 30 miles from Coventry, UK. This was until three years ago when the road was finally dug up, and a fiber cabinet was installed, providing them with a much faster 100Mbps connection.

Conclusion

While satellites play an important role in certain niche scenarios, such as mobile connectivity and remote area internet access, they do not significantly contribute to the overall Internet infrastructure and usage for most people. The vast majority of Internet traffic remains on terrestrial networks due to their higher efficiency, lower cost, and better performance.

References and Further Reading

Browse traffic volumes on other sites for a more comprehensive understanding. References to CAIDA can be found for further reading and research.