The Rural Mobile and Broadband Alliance is an advocacy group with a range of rural broadband service members, including ISPs and municipalities. But one type of company you’re unlikely to see joining the group any time soon is satellite providers.

RuMBA last week issued a white paper questioning the viability of relying on satellite Internet to provide broadband connectivity for unserved or underserved rural areas. The paper raises several concerns that we hear quite frequently about satellite services—including relatively low bandwidth, susceptibility to weather conditions and high latency. But it also brings up some issues that have not been so well recognized—such as satellite operators’ policy of putting daily caps on broadband usage which, the author says, effectively prevent the use of satellite downloads for streaming full-length movies, among other things.

The paper argues passionately for the need to bring broadband services to rural areas that are comparable to what most Americans have. “No longer a mere inconvenience, lack of access to broadband now constitutes a potential death sentence for rural communities thus afflicted,” the author writes.

The major problem with the paper, however, is that it makes no recognition of the fact that the major satellite operators soon plan to launch higher-capacity satellites, which they claim will provide greater bandwidth. The satellite operators say they have also taken steps to minimize the impact of latency.

Perhaps some of these claims could be disputed. For example, perhaps the expanded capacity will enable satellite operators to remove or adjust the daily cap, but they might find they need to re-instate the cap as demand grows.

But not to recognize the new satellite developments at all is a serious flaw.
source: blog.connectedplanetonline.com