Is Elon Musk's Starlink the future of rural broadband or will advances in fibre optic technologies ensure that cable infrastructure prevails?

Does this mean that fibre's reign as the UK's broadband medium of choice is coming to an end? Far from it. Just as in the skies above our heads, there is a revolution happening in the earth beneath our feet as the rollout of rural fibre continues to gather pace. 

Starlink is still being rolled out and is not yet operating at its full potential. Nevertheless, its download speed (as reported by Ookla for Q4 2021) is currently 121Mbps. This is nearly twice as fast as the UK's current fixed broadband median of 57Mbps, while its upload speed is comparable to the median upload for all fixed broadband in the UK.

Starlink is set to be joined by OneWeb, which is part owned by the British taxpayer, and Amazon's Kuiper project. OneWeb and Starlink have already placed satellites in space while Kuiper is still on the ground but has approval to launch over 3000 satellites. Because these are satellite-based systems, without the need for cable connections, their development could be good news for rural and remote internet users. 

However, at the same time as the planet is being ringed by, literally, thousands of satellites, thousands of kilometres of fibre optic cable are being run out beneath the ground as part of the government's £5bn Project Gigabit initiative. The latest tranche of the project will see more than half a million more rural homes and businesses given access to full-fibre gigabit-capable broadband connections.

This will be good news if your home or business has access to fibre-optic broadband because it currently has major cost and proven reliability benefits over Starlink. For domestic customers, standard broadband currently costs around £20 per month, considerably less than the £89 per month for Starlink (plus there is an initial outlay of £489 for the dish, cables, wifi router and £50 shipping). 

In UK, the fibre optic network is expanding all of the time so that the majority of homes in the UK should get faster broadband speeds by the end of the decade. As of September 2021, according to telecoms regulator Ofcom, 96% of UK premises had access to a superfast broadband connection (over 30Mbps) and 46% of UK premises had access to gigabit-capable (1000Mbps) broadband. Prysmian is at the forefront when it comes to developing products for Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks.

Another option for access to fast internet services, is the ongoing roll out of 5G. This will provide quick and easy access to the internet, particularly as satellite internet still needs a wide view of the sky to work properly. Ofcom estimates the 5G signal from at least one mobile operator is available in the vicinity of around 50% of premises. Data to a mobile network operator's 5G masts is generally delivered through fast fibre optic cable connections or through hybrid cables, such as those engineered by Prysmian, which deliver both power and data to the radio heads.

The major advantage Starlink has over fibre and 5G is its widespread availability. Starlink is Elon Musk's realisation of his plan to "rebuild the internet in space". It is a potential game changer for very remote homes and businesses simply because Starlink offers a fast broadband service that is not reliant on Earth-bound cables, and so is suitable for areas where it currently is, and is likely to remain, logistically impossible or prohibitively expensive to install cable infrastructure.

As of May 2022, SpaceX has a constellation of over 2400 mass-produced small satellites in low earth orbit. These satellites are typically orbiting 300 miles above the earth, as opposed to the geostationary satellites of traditional satellite internet providers which are 22,000 miles above the Earth's surface. They also transmit data using lasers, instead of radio waves, which means data travels at lightspeed. These differences are reflected in Starlink's vastly improved speeds, latency and reliability in comparison with conventional satellite internet providers.

Will Starlink replace fibre? It is unlikely. The advantage of fibre to consumers is that it has a proven reliability and there is a choice of providers and budget plans and speeds, depending on consumers' budgets. What is likely, however, is that Starlink will replace traditional satellite internet services for those without access to a fixed-link or 5G mobile broadband.