I met someone who is in the satellite business and works with SES Astra. I asked a bunch of questions since it’s not often you get a chance to learn about the business of satellites.
I wondered if bandwidth on satellites would be a shrinking business as more and more of the world gets wired with undersea fibre. Short answer: no. Many times, satellite bandwidth is cheaper e.g. for providing broadband to remote areas in the US and Europe. It’s cheaper for major telcos to acquire bandwidth over satellite than lay down cable.
I remember a similar reason for the use of solar power out in the Serengeti – it’s too expensive and intrusive to lay cables for power in remote areas. Solar power is presumably quite competitive in such environments, especially since sun is plentiful.
Satellite bandwidth for broadband continues to decline in price, with roughly a 75% decline in unit prices over the last five or so years [the numbers were in conversation, so take all these as rough approximations].
Until now, projects in Africa have been a common use case for satellite providers. Paul English recently launched JoinAfrica.org to cover Africa in free, low-bandwidth Internet access, which may change things or it may use satellite-provided broadband for major access points.
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