Fiber vs satellite: the latency of physics.
Satellite is mostly two species: Starlink (LEO, 550 km up) and HughesNet / Viasat (geostationary, 35,786 km up). The 60× orbital altitude gap maps almost perfectly to the 15× latency gap between them. Fiber sits below both — and for almost any connection where it's available, it remains the right choice.
Side by side.
| Metric | Fiber (FTTH) | Satellite (LEO + GEO) |
|---|---|---|
| Max download speed | 1–10 Gbps | Starlink ~250 Mbps peak / HughesNet ~100 Mbps |
| Median US download (Q4 2025) | Fiber median 500+ Mbps | Starlink ~117 Mbps / HughesNet ~48 Mbps |
| Upload speed | Symmetric on XGS-PON (1–10 Gbps) | Starlink 10–25 Mbps / HughesNet 3–5 Mbps |
| Latency (typical) | 5–15 ms | Starlink 20–50 ms / HughesNet 600–700 ms |
| Jitter | <1 ms | Starlink 5–15 ms / HughesNet 50–100 ms |
| Capacity per cell | Effectively unlimited per home | Shared per satellite beam (17–23 Gbps for Starlink V2) |
| Weather impact | None | Starlink moderate (Ku rain fade) / HughesNet severe (Ka) |
| Mobility | None — fixed | Starlink Roam / Mini supports mobile use |
| Install cost | $0–$200 with most providers | Starlink $349 hardware + $0 install / HughesNet $99–$300 |
| Monthly cost | $65–$95 (1 Gig) | Starlink $55–$175 / HughesNet $50–$90 |
| Power draw at customer | ONT ~10 W | Starlink dish 50–75 W continuous |
| Best for | Permanent home with fiber available | Rural, RVs, off-grid, disaster recovery |
Sources: Ookla Q4 2025 · SpaceX FCC filings · HughesNet Jupiter-3 specs · IEEE ComSoc Tech Blog Jul 2025
You cannot engineer your way out of the speed of light.
A geostationary satellite sits 35,786 km above the equator — high enough that its orbit takes exactly 24 hours, so it appears fixed in the sky. That height is the whole point (so your dish never has to move), but it's also the catch: every packet you send has to travel up 35,786 km, back down, through the public internet, and back up and down again to receive the reply. Even at the speed of light, that's about half a second per round trip.
Starlink's satellites are sixty times closer — 550 km up — which is why ping times drop from 600+ ms to 20–40 ms. The catch is that low-orbit satellites move fast: each one only stays overhead for a few minutes before another takes its place. The dish has to electronically swing its beam to the next satellite, microseconds before the handoff, thousands of times a day.
The bits-per-square-kilometer ceiling.
Starlink has roughly 9,000 active satellites — but only about a third are over land at any given moment, and the total constellation capacity is shared across every subscriber on Earth. The back-of-envelope math comes out to single-digit Mbps per home if Starlink ever scaled to 50 million users worldwide.
A single fiber strand can carry more bandwidth than every Starlink satellite combined. That's not hyperbole — modern DWDM systems push 30+ Tbps down one pair of glass strands. Fiber's capacity scales with the number of fibers you install; satellite's capacity is capped by the spectrum you can re-use without interference.
A Starlink satellite is the size of a dining table, flies 340 miles up at 17,000 mph, and burns up on re-entry within five years.
Fiber vs satellite — questions worth asking.
Is fiber faster than Starlink?
On peak speeds, yes — fiber commonly delivers 1–10 Gbps; Starlink median US download was about 117 Mbps in Q4 2025. On latency, fiber is significantly lower (5–15 ms vs Starlink's 20–50 ms). Starlink is genuinely impressive for satellite — but it's competing with cable, not displacing fiber in markets that have both.
Why does Starlink have lower latency than HughesNet?
Orbital altitude. Starlink satellites orbit at ~550 km (Low Earth Orbit); HughesNet's Jupiter-3 is geostationary at ~35,786 km. The signal must travel up and back: Starlink round-trip is ~20–40 ms, GEO is at minimum 476 ms one-way (~600–700 ms round-trip in practice). That's physics, not engineering — no upgrade to a GEO satellite can fix it.
Can Starlink replace fiber?
Not at population scale. Each Starlink satellite serves a finite geographic cell with finite spectrum — back-of-envelope ~12–25 Mbps per square kilometer of land before subscriber sharing. That math works in rural and exurban areas; it falls apart in dense markets. Starlink is genuinely transformative for rural, mobile, and disaster-recovery use; it isn't structurally able to displace urban fiber.
What is rain fade?
Rain droplets absorb and scatter high-frequency radio waves. Ka-band (HughesNet/Viasat) is hit hardest — heavy rain can drop the signal for minutes. Ku-band (Starlink user terminals) is moderately affected — typically a 3–4 dB attenuation in heavy rain that translates to brief speed drops or 5–30 second outages. Fiber is immune; light through glass doesn't care about weather.
How does a Starlink dish actually work?
The dish is a flat phased array of ~1,280 individual antenna patches arranged in a hexagonal honeycomb. Each patch can shift the timing of its transmit/receive signal independently in 5° increments. By coordinating all 1,280 phase shifts, the antenna electronically steers a pencil beam at whichever satellite is overhead — with no moving parts (except a one-time motorized tilt during setup) — and performs make-before-break handoffs to the next satellite as the constellation passes.
Why does Starlink waitlist my area?
Cell saturation. Each satellite has a fixed aggregate capacity (~17–23 Gbps for V2 minis, approaching 1 Tbps for V3); each ground cell shares that across local subscribers. When a cell fills up, SpaceX gates new sign-ups in that area. It's not artificial scarcity — it's the bandwidth-area constraint biting. Waitlists returned across Western US in late 2024 for exactly this reason.
Is HughesNet or Viasat any good in 2026?
For specific niches, yes — they're the only consumer satellite options that work without a clear sky view to the LEO constellation, and they have decades of operational maturity. For most users in most places, Starlink has displaced them: dramatically lower latency, comparable speeds, simpler installation. The remaining niche is where physical sky-view constraints favor a southern-pointing GEO dish over a LEO terminal.
When does satellite beat fiber?
Mobile use (RVs, boats, off-grid cabins), genuinely rural areas where fiber economics break (>$10K cost per home passed), disaster-recovery scenarios (when terrestrial infrastructure is damaged), in-flight Wi-Fi, ships at sea, military forward-operating bases, and the few addresses where fiber simply isn't being built. For a fixed home with fiber available, satellite isn't the rational choice — but where fiber isn't, Starlink is meaningfully better than what existed five years ago.