Broaadband: Starlink Innovations Prove To Be A Good Competitor and Partner For Established Providers

As satellite internet delivers broadband speeds, it is increasingly becoming a partner and often a competing service to established fiber and cable broadband services especially for consumers according to recent reporting in lightreading.com.

Beginning the year with approximately 10 million customers globally, satellite internet providers have found the bulk of their market in rural and in difficult locations for land based services to reach. Starlink currently dominates the market with over 90% of current market share while Amazon is preparing its Amazon Leo service for introduction in the near future.

The ability to maintain low earth orbit is one of the key elements to providing broadband similar to earth based broadband because it helps cut down on latency in data transmission which can be a critical problem in commercial, enterprise, and media streaming application.

Starlink is proving to be a competitor and a partner to earth based systems. As it builds out its now approved 16,500 satellite system (approaching 10,000 in operation already), the service is competing in the consumer and small business market with cable and fiber with nearly 20% of its subscriptions being drawn from higher end cable and fiber consumers.

As a partner, Starlink has partnered with Comcast to offer service to rural and exurban consumers and businesses that were otherwise beyond the reach of the cable giant. And in cases of emergencies, like when Jamaica found a key part of its service knocked out by a hurricane, Starlink provided the key service support to get service back and running in 96 hours.

High quality internet and data services are critical to the success of organizations across the West and we at the Association of Western Employers will continue to track the development of this market.