Satellite companies vow to bring better broadband to more rural customers with improved technology

Two Internet companies are hoping to launch new satellites in the next year that will increase broadband speeds for underserved rural areas at a cheaper cost than wired alternatives. Satellite Internet providers "serve a little more than one million customers, most in rural areas that have no other options. Their services can be painfully slow and cost twice as much as high-speed broadband," Susanna G. Kim reports for The New York Times. Now WildBlue and HughesNet hope to change satellite Internet's reputation with state-of-the art services.

WildBlue’s new satellite "alone will have 10 times the capacity of its three current satellites combined," Kim writes. The companies say the new satellites "will enable them, at prices similar to what they now charge, to provide Internet service at speeds many times faster than they now offer — as fast, in some cases, as fiber connections," Kim writes. Arunas Slekys, vice president for HughesNet, told her, "One advantage satellite has is ubiquity. The cost of reaching you with a satellite dish is independent of where you are. Fiber or cable is labor-intensive and dependent on distance."

"There’s an unserved market" in rural areas, Slekys said. "And it’s not as though they have terrestrial or satellite. They only have satellite as a choice." Even with the improved equipment, users will face slight delays, about a half-second, as signals are transmitted the 22,000 miles from satellite to their personal computer, Kim reports. Customers who aren't able to point their dishes toward the satellite's locations in the southern skies won't be able to access the improved speeds, and dishes must be cleared of all snow during winter.

"Of its $2.5 billion share of the stimulus funds, the Agriculture Department is allocating just $100 million in grants to satellite companies," Kim writes. While the satellite companies say other stimulus money could have been used to reach many more customers if it had been allocated to satellite service, some question the reliability of satellite connections. "To compare what we do with what satellite does as a service is an apples-to-oranges comparison," Joseph Freddoso, president of nonprofit MCNC, which received $28 million to extend fiber to 420 North Carolina schools and libraries, told Kim. (Read more)