Broadband Satellite ISP Avanti Communications UK, which hopes to launch the first of its new HYLAS series (HYLAS 1) satellites into earth orbit tomorrow (here), has quietly boosted the download speed of its forthcoming service from 8Mbps to 10Mbps (end-user price estimated at £25 per month).

The increased HYLAS1 service speed appears to be in response to Eutelsat, which will launch its competing 10Mbps capable KA-SAT next month (here). Avanti counters by claiming that HYLAS1 has ended up being more powerful than expected.

However Avanti's Chief Executive, David Williams, appears to be less knowledgeable when it comes to the thorny issue of latency (server response times / ping). As gamers will already be aware, fast paced online multiplayer titles requires a latency of around 80-100ms (milliseconds) or less to be smooth, anything above that would make most games unplayable (lag).


Even real-time UAV systems suffer from input latency, yet they are definitely not comparable to a fast paced multiplayer game like Call of Duty 4 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and don't need as many server hops. The best digital Satellite's would struggle to deliver a latency of less than 200-300ms and, in this respect, HYLAS1 is not so different.

It should be said that other services, such as VoIP (Skype), VPN and live IPTV can also suffer under high latency conditions, although they are usually still usable. However, fast paced online multiplayer games generally remain out of reach for Satellite solutions.

In separate news Avanti has also announced that its future HYLAS 2 Ka-band Satellite, which is due for launch next spring 2011, has successfully completed its Critical Design Review this week. Passing this key milestone means that manufacturing of HYLAS 2 can continue to proceed at full speed and that the design has been validated.


As it stands, HYLAS1 should be able to deliver broadband download speeds of up to 10Mbps to 350,000 customers' across the UK and Europe. That's quite impressive. The future HYLAS2 craft will go even further and be able to deliver a service to 700,000 customers at similar speeds.

Both Satellites' could in theory deliver even faster broadband download speeds if they wanted, although this might reduce the bandwidth available and thus the total number of potential customers or service quality. Initially HYLAS1 will have to manage on its own and, in the event of a major failure, would be left without any equal redundancy in its network.

A Live feed from Kourou, starting at 6:00pm GMT tomorrow, will broadcast Avanti's launch. This should be viewable from their website.

UPDATE 12:45pm

Avanti has clarified that the price tag of £25 per month only applies to the services basic 2Mbps connectivity and not its 8Mbps 10Mbps option, which is likely to cost significantly more. Since it's already possible to get 3-4Mbps Satellite services for that price then Avanti could find it more difficult to enter the wider consumer market.