According to the report, the satellite internet market holds huge potential as it captures 73% of the global space industry.
The satellite internet market will surpass a market valuation of $6bn and expand at a CAGR of more than 8% during the forecast period, 2021-2031, according to new data by Fact.MR.
As per 2020 data, globally, there were at least 400 submarine cables in service, and fiber optics cables constitute almost 99% of the total international internet data traffic.
Pricing is considered a crucial part in providing internet services. Pricing differs as per international internet transit, which can be $1 – 3 per megabit per second (Mbps) per month for prominent cross-country routes submarine-based services, whereas, the price for dedicated satellite internet could be $200 – 400 Mbps per month. Thus, at the current level, satellite internet is cost-effective only for regions that are remote and have a dispersed population, and places where the deployment of fiber optics is challenging. However, upcoming satellites are expected to provide services at a lower cost.
For instance, in the case of Starlink, the pre-order subscription cost is $99 a month. Along with this, the service requires a series of hardware that costs $499.
Latency for various orbits are – for GEO it is ~477 ms, for MEO it is ~27-477 ms, and for LEO it is ~2-27 ms. The newer versions of GEO satellites provide higher throughput (HTS) but latency remains the same. Whereas, LEO satellite constellations require a large number of satellites to provide the service since they are low in orbit, cover less area, and revolve around the globe in 88-127 minutes. Their closeness to the Earth enables them to provide the advantage of low latency.
The bandwidth capacity that LEO satellite constellations will be able to provide is likely to undersize existing high-throughput geostationary orbit satellites. Traditional GEO has a bandwidth capacity of 1-10 gigabit per second (Gbps), first-generation HTS provides a range of around 10-50 Gbps, while third-generation HTS provides up-to 150-350 Gbps.
While new generation constellations have the capacity of 10s of Gbps for a single satellite, which totals to almost from a single digit to 10s of Tbps. It is expected that by the end of 2021, the speed of satellite internet is likely to be around 20 Tbps, and by the end of the decade, it is likely to reach 60 Tbps.
Similarly, fiber internet provides around 1 Gbps of internet speed. Satellite internet services mainly utilise Ku and Ka bandwidth services. Frequency in each band is an important difference that provides different speeds. Where the Ku-band uses frequency in the range of 12 to 18 GHz, the Ka-band uses frequency in the range of 26.6 GHz to 40 GHz. With higher frequency comes higher bandwidth, which results in higher data transfer and performance.
