So, my parents livr in an area where the only internet available is satellite. It sucks.
However, they also have satellite TV and can watch that no problem.
What’s the difference? Is it just a scale issue where TV has more money and resources compared to satellite internet companies?
In: Technology
Broadcast technology.
You’re beaming THE SAME DATA to everyone. The TV channels are the same for everyone, they are all shown at the same time, and they all get sent to everyone.
But the Internet has a vast array of data. You can’t predict what people are going to ask for, not everyone wants to watch the same thing at EXACTLY the same time.
So satellite TV (and radio) is rather easy. Just put your programming on and then just blast it at everyone.
But satellite Internet has three problems:
1. You have to work out what everyone wants. They need to be able to tell you that. That’s difficult – they all individually would have to talk to you somehow, either to the satellite or to a groundstation. That’s complex hardware and a lot of people wanting to talk means they only get a brief time each to talk.
2. When you know what they want, broadcasting it to them means they’re sharing the airwaves with an entire continent of other people’s content too. And pretty much nobody wants exactly the same thing at the exact same time. So instantly the speed of the connection is chopped up among all your active customers.
3. The distance between the ground and the satellite introduces latency. There’s little you can do about this. It’s simple physics – the distances involves means that there will always be a delay between you sending a message and someone receiving it. Most satellite internet sucks for gaming, video- and audio-conferencing (telephony) because of this. Everything feels “laggy”. Browsing and streaming are generally okay but real-time protocols can get laggy.
Basically, it’s the difference between you reading out the newspaper over a tannoy (lots of people get the news, but they don’t get much choice about what news they get and when) and people picking up their own newspaper from the stands (where they can choose which newspaper to read, and when to read it).
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