Pardon my lack of knowledge about this.
In: 11
Believe it or not, but optic cables are faster basically no matter the distances involved.
Fiber optic cables go a bit slower than satellite (due to all the repeaters and routing involved), but it’s really not *that* big a difference. For the purposes of discussion we can say they both go roughly the speed of light.
The satellites are generally in geostationary orbit, roughly 22,236 miles straight up (though usually not straight up, so the actual distance between you and the satellite is longer). A signal has to go from ground to satellite to ground, so it has to travel ~44,000 miles.
For comparison, the entire circumference of earth is about 24,901 miles. It takes a bit less than twice as long for the data to be sent via satellite than to go the long way around to your neighbors house.
Obviously it’s more complicated than that. There’s the time it takes for routing, the time it takes for repeaters extend the range of the signals, the distance the data has to travel to/from the ground stations, the fact that fiber cables don’t run straight across the planet, you might have to bounce a signal from satellite to satellite to get line of sight, etc, etc, etc.
Lots of factors, but it all ultimately adds up to even if we completely disregard the cost of lofting the hardware into space and the incredible amounts of hardware required to be in space for everyone to use satellite-only, the fastest the data can go is still far slower than any reasonable, or even unreasonable, fiber optic routes.
Going pure satellite when fiber is an option is worse in every possible way. It’s slower, it’s more expensive, it’s dependent on the weather, it requires clear line of sight to the sky. It’s just worse except in very narrow circumstances.
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