Survey Wrongly Claims 1.3 Million UK Homes Use Satellite Broadband

A somewhat questionable new survey from Uswitch, which is based on feedback from a nationally representative sample of 4,002 UK adults, has boldly claimed that 1.3 million UK households are already using a satellite broadband connection. But we can’t find anything to substantiate such a figure.

The survey is designed to examine the potential market for satellite based broadband services and to highlight what caveats may exist, at least from the consumer perspective. For example, it found that 66% of respondents would be “put off” buying such a service because of the huge setup (hardware) costs, which in some cases can reach about £500 (e.g. Starlink), although others (e.g. KONNECT) can add this through an affordable monthly rental.

Interestingly, those who said they used a Satellite connection were asked how much they paid (per month) for the service, which returned an average result of £29.70 (the average for all broadband users was £33.60). This, to us at least, suggests that most are taking entry-level packages from the existing generation of GEO / GSO satellites in a higher earth orbit (around 35,000km), rather than Starlink’s £89 per month LEO solution (still technically a beta).

The advantage of such services is that they can technically achieve virtually universal coverage (i.e. provided the dish is mounted high enough and your view of the sky isn’t obstructed), which makes them useful in remote rural areas. But despite this, some 27% of households told the survey that they didn’t believe the service was available in their area, while 46% fear the weather in their area would be too bad for it (this can be an issue during certain events, but modern services can cope reasonably well with bad weather).

Overall, only two fifths of consumers (41%) are aware of satellite broadband, while just 14% have considered trying it out. Part of the problem may be a lack of brand recognition, with three quarters of UK consumers not having heard of any satellite ISPs. Starlink, which hasn’t even had its full commercial launch yet, is however the best known, recognised by 1 in 10 UK people.

Finally, more than half of satellite broadband users (53%) say it offers a better alternative than traditional connections, with two fifths (41%) saying it is faster than the alternatives (obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t have resorted to it), and three in ten (31%) believing it to be cheaper, but the latter really requires a more involved comparison (i.e. gauging value to rural users).

Admittedly, services that use GEO / GSO satellites tend to run into problems with much slower speeds at peak times, as well as terrible latency performance (no good for fast-paced online games) and restrictions on data use. The new generation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems, such as from SpaceX’s Starlink or OneWeb, seem like they could resolve many such bugbears, but only time will tell how sustainable they are.

Now back to that figure of 1.3 million, which is based on just 189 people in the survey saying they had satellite. We think it’s wrong. Ofcom said a few months back that “in recent years, we have reported GSO satellite customer subscriptions in the low tens of thousands” and we’d tend to agree with that.

Looking at some company data – the largest UK satellite ISP bigblu, before being acquired by Eutelsat, had “several tens of thousands of subscribers” across the whole of Europe. But a case could perhaps be made for c.100,000 or a bit more – across all ISPs – in the UK. However, ISPreview doesn’t even remotely see the level of feedback you’d expect from a service with 1.3 million UK households under its belt. We think some respondents may be confusing Sky’s Satellite TV dishes with broadband connectivity, which does happen.

The good news is that a new generation of satellite broadband solutions, particularly LEO providers, but also modern GEO/GSO platforms, are starting to foster somewhat of a renaissance of this technology. But one thing this survey clearly shows is that if the Government wants to push those as a rural connectivity solution, then they’ll have to do a bit more work on the awareness and affordability front.

We’d also like to see Satellite ISPs being held to tougher quality standards by Ofcom and the advertising authority (ASA), as at present it’s more like the wild west of markets. But admittedly this can be tricky because many of the actual operators are not UK based, even if some ISPs are.

UPDATE 8:54am

Ofcom has kindly furnished us with a more specific figure than the one we used above. The regulator estimated there were around 27,000 fixed satellite broadband connections at the end of 2020 (residential and SME), based on data from providers, and estimates for providers who haven’t submitted data to Ofcom. So.. not quite 1.3 million there 🙂 .