Seems like SpaceX's Starlink will have no shortage of business.
It seems like a no-brainer to use space as a backbone haul for inter-continent traffic vs. physical cables.
It might be slightly faster, it'll probably be cheaper, you can scale the bandwidth by deploying more (very cheap) satellites.
Most of all, the traffic cannot be cut, spied on, you can spread access points in multiple locations (i.e. resiliency via distribution vs. single point of failure).
I don't think that the inability to spy on traffic is a typical benefit of satellites over fiber optic cables. :-(
Spying on RF signals to and from satellites was a major Cold War activity. Governments spent a lot of money on it and got really good at it.
You might say that satellite data is still safer than terrestrial cables because a particular adversary might not be present in the footprint of a particular satellite, but (1) they might be, because the equipment needed to intercept the downlink may be easy enough to conceal, and (2) satellite signals get intercepted in both directions, uplink and downlink.
The one countersurveillance benefit that I can think of is in bypassing cable landing regulations that are used to require cable operators to give governments access to the data on their cables. While governments may also try to place licensing regulations on the use of satellite data services within their territory, it's a lot easier for individual end-users to evade or ignore those regulations than it would be for them to surreptitiously land a fiber-optic cable! However, governments will also have an easy time monitoring downlink signals in their territory so they may not lose much access compared to the cable landing license approach, depending on how the operators handle link encryption.
Starlink, Kuiper and Oneweb will be a significant improvement in $ per Mbps and throughput capacity over current options via C, Ku and Ka band geostationary VSAT terminals, for very remote and hard to reach locations.
And for small users much more likely to be affordable for a CPE terminal and monthly service than the smallest service options available via o3b.
It will not be a viable option to replace 80 x 100 Gbps DWDM wavelengths on submarine fiber cables.
There's no way that wireless links will ever be faster than backbone fiber - the whole notion makes very little sense. Starlink may be useful in other ways, of course.
The speed of light in glass-fiber is about 1.5 times slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. Hence the extra distance for lower-orbit systems can be canceled out by the extra speed of signals.
This is only talking about latency. Bandwidth is a different game. Sure, any given fiber link will probably have better bandwidth than any satellite link. Cause the medium in between is much more consistent, leading to less signal degradation. However, fiber needs to be placed, connected, maintained. Moreover, fiber needs a physical space.
Meanwhile wireless just needs access-points at both ends, well-aimed antennas, and little interference in between. Notably, I believe star-link will use laser communication for inter-satelite communication, which essentially means perfect directional antennas.
This stuff might be able to scale faster. It can certainly scale further because you don't need the space for all those cables.
"Starlink has the potential to provide lower latency around the globe than terrestrial fiber because light travels faster in vacuum than in optical silica fiber.
"Delay is Not an Option: Low Latency Routing in Space"
...
"We conclude that a network built in this manner can provide lower latency communications than any possible terrestrial optical fiber network for communications over distances greater than about 3000 km.""
Traditional satellite internet providers used satellites in geosynchronous orbit (that whole “aiming your dish” thing). That’s a 270ms hop up and another back.
Starlink is the other “not here yet” services are going to use low earth orbits for something like a 25-35ms latency to the satellite.
No, typical communication satellites operate in geostationary orbit, 36,000 km high. Signal must go up that far, then down again. The earth's circumference is 40,000 km, so you've traveled more already (and yet, are still in the same area because I didn't count transmitting to another satellite -- which AFAIK is never done: the satellite transmits back down to somewhere where the data can be transmitted trough fiber).
Assuming light travels at 2c/3 in fiber, it would still take less time for a signal to go around the equator back to the same spot than for it to arrive anywhere on earth if using a satellite link.
Spacex's satellites are a game-changer because they sit in low orbit.
Typical satellites are at geostationary orbit (35,786km).
Starlink satellites will be at 340km/550km/1150km. Lower orbits = less latency, but require a lot more satellites to cover the same area.
Wireless links could absolutely be faster than fiber links in latency. Unlikely they'll be faster in bandwidth though that's also possible if they are able to convince regulatory agencies that their beam-forming is good enough to allow them to use large swaths of bandwidth.
The idea with Starlink is that it will be low enough in the atmosphere and the satellite density will be high enough that the satellites should be able to route site-to-site. For some applications (high frequency trading) you could get potentially lower latency than with fiber.
It seems like a no-brainer to use space as a backbone haul for inter-continent traffic vs. physical cables.
It might be slightly faster, it'll probably be cheaper, you can scale the bandwidth by deploying more (very cheap) satellites.
Most of all, the traffic cannot be cut, spied on, you can spread access points in multiple locations (i.e. resiliency via distribution vs. single point of failure).