Posted: 18th Feb, 2010 By: MarkJ

The chairman of
UKspace, a trade association for Britain's space industry, has unsurprisingly suggested that future Satellite broadband services could provide a "
faster" Internet access solution for consumers if the right investment were made.
Richard Peckham, Chairman of UKspace, told BCS:"You might start putting some of your more frequently used internet pages up there because ordinarily there is a delay of about a quarter of a second, getting to the satellite so if you put more data up there that cuts out some of the time lag.
It's going to be step by step but that's the trend, putting more computation up there and more storage up there and then you can start to put the more frequently used pages and things up there. ... we'll know more in five to ten years but it will require some advances in technology."
Sticking an Internet cache in the sky is all well and good for basic website access but it doesn't solve the technologies problems with dynamic data latency (too high for multiplayer gaming and trouble for a lot of other low latency requiring apps).
Similarly the issue of high equipment and service subscription costs remain a factor, as are the often meagre usage allowances offered by consumer Satellite packages. Raw speed will improve but in 5 - 10 years time we should have a lot of 100Mbps fibre optic broadband networks to choose from.