What are the technical reasons that prevent optical-fiber like broadband-internet bandwidths being directly beamed from satellites to home?

Question

I was looking for the kind of internet speeds that are possible via satellites. GEO satellites tend to have very high latency and LEO constellations like Iridium and Globalstar have lower latencies but their throughput is lesser than ground-based broadband internet. What are the technical reasons that make broadband internet user-speeds difficult to achieve via satellites?

In: Technology

Answer 1

The distance the data has to travel from the satellite to your receiver is the main problem. It’s the same as being too far away from your wifi router or when there’s lots of blockage in the way like walls. For satellite internet the blockages are mostly atmospheric conditions such as weather.