Starlink's reach won’t be enough to solve the rural broadband dilemma

Starlink faces many challenges in order to provide a robust commercial service, and ultimately to become financially sustainable so that potential customers can rely on it in the longer term. Some of the technical limitations of the Starlink service mean that it will never be possible to rely solely on Starlink to provide universal service outside the range of terrestrial broadband solutions. Because there is only a finite amount of spectrum available to low-earth orbit (LEO) broadband systems such as Starlink, only a limited amount of capacity can be delivered to users in a given area, regardless of the number of Starlink satellites in the sky. It is therefore far from clear that Starlink will be capable of serving a comparable number of customers to Viasat and Hughes (i.e. in excess of 500,000 subscribers), let alone a significant proportion of the millions of homes in the US that currently lack terrestrial broadband, in the medium term. Overall, while Starlink represents an admirable first attempt to develop an LEO broadband system and bring more choices to rural US consumers, it cannot and will not become the only option for satellite broadband in the US or around the world, because in many areas at least some potential customers will be unable to access Starlink, due to capacity limitations and/or the difficulty of securing a reliable line-of-sight to the constellation.

[Tim Farrar has over 25 years of experience across the telecom and satellite industries and is currently an independent director of Marlink, the largest independent distributor of satellite services.]