[LINK] Europe to get new broadband satellite(s)

[Fernando Cassia]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 6:38 PM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:
>
> http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/86098/20101126/europe-gets-new-broadband-satellite.htm
> A British communications company is set to launch a satellite today
> that will provide broadband communications to rural residents and
> businesses in Europe.
> The HYLAS-1 satellite, which will provide broadband access to
> customers in Europe, launches today (Nov. 26).

Internet by satellite is not only S-L-O-W (measured in PING rates, aka
LATENCY, not raw Mbps) due to the 35.000 km+ back-and-forth journey,
but also expensive.

The transponders have only oh-so-many bandwidth. Once you max out the
available transponders, you´re out of luck, you have to lift another
satellite. Not to mention maintenance costs of keeping the satellite
in orbit and in position (systems monitoring, orbit adjustments, etc).

Whereas on Fiber once you lay out the ducts, you can always roll out
"n" new fibers on parallel with the existing one (until you fill up
the ducts, which can take several decades :).

Reference:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/why-satellite-internet-service-is-so-slow/

Not to mention the advances in fiber technology that peridically
increase the bandwidth of existing fiber by the creative use of colors
or modulation/coding.

Good luck using modern AJAX interfaces (that require lots of
concurrent http connections going back and forth just to update an
user interface) over satellite. Satellite internet is OK to download
email in a batch, or big file downloads. But sucks royally for short
burts going back and forth (ie clicks on an AJAX interface).

FC