Citing last week's Comcast network outage as the kind of unforeseen event that small operators need insurance against, Hughes Network Systems has launched a backup high-speed broadband service for unexpected network down times.

HughesNet Internet Continuity provides automatic switching to satellite broadband when terrestrial internet connections go down, the company said. 

The subscription-based service is targeted at small businesses and is a form of insurance against losses due to cable, fiber or DSL downtime, the company said. The price starts at $39.99 per month.

"Last week’s Comcast outage crippled companies across the nation, leaving many without Internet, video and voice services," the company said. "With HughesNet Internet Continuity, users are automatically switched to satellite broadband any time their terrestrial Internet connection goes down."

Comcast said at the time that one of its backbone "partners" had a fiber cut (in Manhattan) that affected its business and residential broadband customers as well as video and voice.

Related: Broadband's Space Race Heats Up

“Whether as a result of DSL degradation, equipment malfunction or severe weather, terrestrial Internet outages are commonplace,” said Peter Gulla, SVP of marketing for HughesNet. “For small businesses that rely on the Internet, an unexpected outage can hurt their bottom line."

The system combines a WiFi modem, antenna, radio and a router to automatically switch to satellite and back to terrestrial.

The satellite backup provides speeds of up to 25 Mbps downstream/3 Mbps upstream, so qualifies as high-speed under the FCC's definition.

When it comes to the next generation of broadband services, fiber-based gigabit networks and 5G-enabled fixed wireless networks have drawn much-deserved attention. But satellite broadband services and integrated satellite and terrestrial services are becoming potent new sources of competition to the benefit of both residential consumers and enterprise customers.

Advanced geostationary orbit and emerging non-geostationary orbit fixed-satellite broadband providers are fast approaching the ability to reach residential consumers nationwide with high speeds. Competing fixed-satellite broadband services are increasingly offering consumers and businesses access with 25 Mbps, 50 Mbps, and even 100 Mbps download speeds. Near-future satellite broadband technologies are anticipated to reach terabit-level speeds.

According to the FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report, at the end of 2016, about 92.3% of the U.S. population had access to fixed broadband Internet access services offering speeds of 25Mbps/3Mbps for uploads and downloads. Fixed broadband service coverage numbers rose to 95.6% of the population when satellite broadband services are included. Importantly, fixed-satellite broadband services have the potential to quickly close the broadband coverage gap almost entirely and to give consumers who already have access to broadband services new competitive choices.

Since 2017, the FCC rightly has encouraged satellite broadband services, including by granting new market entrant applications and by streamlining satellite service rules. Going forward, the Commission should continue making expeditious approval of satellite-based broadband services a priority. The Commission should follow through with its ongoing effort to streamline rules. Also, the Commission should reduce processing delays and at all times seek to make suitable spectrum available in a timely fashion for new satellite technologies and services, for example, like Ligado’s proposed service to use satellite-terrestrial spectrum on an integrated basis to serve primarily industrial enterprises.

Emerging Competition from Geostationary Orbit Fixed-Satellite Broadband Services: HughesNet and ViaSat
The Satellite Industry Association’s 2017 report indicates that there were nearly two million residential subscribers to geostationary fixed satellite broadband services at the end of 2016. The FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report called specific attention to geostationary fixed-satellite broadband services offered by Hughes Network Systems and ViaSat: “The 2017 launches of the high throughput Jupiter 2 and ViaSat 2 satellites by Hughes and ViaSat, respectively, could further increase 25 Mbps/3 Mbps satellite offerings in the future.”

HughesNet is currently the largest provider of residential fixed broadband service, with approximately 1 million subscribers in 2017. In March of 2017, HughesNet deployed its advanced EchoStar XIX satellite, thereby doubling the capacity of its prior satellite configuration. Hughes’ reply comment in the FCC’s broadband progress report proceeding stated the EchoStar XIX enables it “to deliver broadband-defined speeds of 25/3 Mbps for residential users and 55/5 Mbps for enterprise users across the continental United States.”

Meanwhile, Hughes is planning an early 2021 launch of its EchoStar XXIV/JUPITER 3 ultra-high density satellite, which “will provide residential and commercial Internet and data services, including in-flight Internet and network backhaul for remote cellular towers.” It is reported that the Echostar XXIV/JUPITER 3 will have a total throughput of 500 gigabits per second.

At the end of 2017 ViaSat had about 577,000 residential subscribers to its broadband service, according to a quarterly earnings report. On February 2 of this year, ViaSat announced the availability of its fastest residential broadband service to date. Enabled by ViaSat-2 (pictured), its latest generation satellite, the new satellite broadband service has advertised speed tiers reaching 25 Mbps, 50 Mbps, and 100 Mbps in download speeds.

Via-Sat’s new satellite broadband service is available across the nation and offers unlimited data for all of its plans. A San Diego Union-Tribune story indicates that ViaSat intends to be competing with HughesNet and is also “positioning its service as a higher speed alternative to DSL offerings.” And ViaSat’s future plans include the launch of its ViaSat-3 satellite, which potentially will offer 1 terabit per second download speeds.

Emerging Competition from Non-Geostationary Fixed-Satellite Broadband Services: OneWeb, Space Norway, Telesat and SpaceX
The FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report also highlighted recent agency efforts to close the digital divide by promoting non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) fixed-satellite services with purported terabit-level speed capabilities. In June 2017, for instance, the Commission granted market access to SoftBank-backed OneWeb for its NGSO system. The Commission also granted NGSO applications by Space Norway and Telesat in 2017.

According to the FCC’s OneWeb Order, OneWeb’s system is set to consist of “a constellation of 720 satellites evenly distributed in 18 near-polar orbital planes, at an approximate altitude of 1200 kilometers.” OneWeb intends to use its system of numerous low-orbit satellites “to provide high-speed, affordable broadband connectivity to anyone, anywhere” in the United States, with launches planned for 2018 and 2019. Reports indicate that OneWeb’s plans include “connecting every unconnected school” by the year 2022. OneWeb’s first satellite constellation is projected to reach speeds of seven terabits per second, with successive constellations reaching significantly higher speeds.

Meanwhile, Space Norway’s planned “Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) system consists of two satellites in one orbit,” which would provide fixed broadband service coverage to unserved and underserved residential customers in the Artic region of the United States. Additionally, Telesat was “permitted to access the U.S. market using a proposed constellation of 117 satellites,” and thereby “enhance competition among existing and future” fixed-satellite broadband services.

Furthermore, on February 14, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai proposed that the Commission grant the application of Elon Musk’s SpaceX “to provide broadband services using satellite technologies in the United States and on a global basis.” Reportedly, SpaceX would deliver fixed-satellite broadband services using “4,425 satellites in non-geostationary orbit traveling in a tightly choreographed ballet 700 miles above the surface of the Earth.”

The FCC Should Continue Promoting Satellite-Based Broadband Technologies
The FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report indicates that “[a]s of year-end 2016… over 24 million Americans still lack fixed terrestrial broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.” Also, 30.7% of Americans in rural areas as well as 35.4% of Americans on Tribal lands lacked access to fixed terrestrial broadband with speeds of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.”

Fixed-satellite broadband services – including those briefly surveyed above – can provide an important solution for reaching unserved and underserved areas. Furthermore, fixed satellite broadband platforms can offer additional, competing choices to residential consumers and businesses in those areas already covered by wireline broadband networks and soon to be covered by 5G fixed wireless networks.

Moreover, advanced satellite-based broadband technologies are necessary to fully enable the Internet-of-Things. Satellite services will be essential for transmitting geo-location information to vehicles as well as for transmitting other data to myriad types of smart devices and equipment. Pending before the Commission, for example, is Ligado’s proposed service, which would use satellite capability in combination with a terrestrial network to deliver smart device communications.

If approved, the service would primarily support transportation, energy, electric utility, and public safety industry sectors. Ligado’s proposal, which depends on the use of mid-band spectrum in the 1-2 GHz range, was filed at the Commission back in December 2015. And the public comment period concluded in August 2016. Unless and until the FCC resumes its review process and approves the proposal, valuable mid-range spectrum resources will continue to go unused and generate no economic or other public benefits.

In sum, satellite technologies are poised to become increasingly important competitors in the next-generation broadband services market and essential facilitators of the Internet of Things. Accordingly, the FCC should build on its recent track record of promoting fixed-satellite broadband services. Indeed, prompt approval of new services using satellite-based technologies should remain a top priority. Streamlining of satellite service-related rules and clearing spectrum for commercial usage by satellite services should also remain imperatives.

Seth L. Cooper is senior fellow at the Free State Foundation, a Rockville, Md.-based think tank promoting free-market public policies.

Kourou, French Guiana — “We have more internets!”

After years of tension and toil, that was the joyful exultation of a ViaSat engineer the night of June 2, nearly 45 minutes after ViaSat 2, a new high-capacity broadband satellite, was successfully launched into orbit aboard an Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket from Arianespace’s facilities in French Guiana.

The new bird, built by Boeing Commercial Satellite Systems, is equipped to deliver a powerful payload of 300 Gigabits per second of total throughput.

ViaSat 2 won’t enter service until early 2018 (ViaSat announced on June 22 that the solar arrays of the new satellite were successfully deployed), but the company is already laying the groundwork to deliver satellite broadband services of 100 Megabits per second or more.

For satellite-delivered broadband, that will represent a major accomplishment. A 100 Megabits-per-second offering would essentially quadruple the maximum downstream speeds now delivered by ViaSat’s current top end “Exede” service, as well as what’s offered by one of its chief rivals, Echo-Star-owned Hughes Network Systems.

“We’re still working on our plans, but we likely will have service plans that are up to 100 Mbps, and we may have some that are as high as 200 Mbps,” Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, said in an interview just hours before the launch, and during a driving rainstorm that, thanks to the lack of lightning, was never truly a threat to scrub the big event. “The satellite’s capable of that. The real issue is how do we price those plans and how many subscribers can we put on them?”

Though a 100 Mbps satellite-delivered broadband service is achievable, Dankberg said he believes most of the company’s subscribers will be on tiers that deliver slower speeds. But the launch of ViaSat 2 will give the company, which has about 659,000 satellite-broadband subscribers, the ability to far exceed what it’s delivering in the U.S. today using a legacy satellite fleet that includes ViaSat 1 and birds acquired in its 2009 acquisition of WildBlue Communications.

In addition to delivering gobs of bandwidth, ViaSat 2, at an orbital location of 22,236 miles above the earth’s equator (at 69.9 degrees west longitude), will enable ViaSat to expand coverage in North America, Central America, the Caribbean and a portion of northern South America. Key transportation routes between North America and Europe also are expected to benefit.

And there’s a lot more to come. “ViaSat has ambitions to be a global broadband services company,” Dankberg said. “This ViaSat 2 launch is a big step along the way for us towards that path.”

Faster and More Competitive
The ability to deliver faster speeds will give ViaSat a way to compete more directly with cable operators, telcos and other wireline internet service providers. But that won’t be the primary focus.

“Our mission is to be a really good choice for the underserved — not necessarily for people who already have access to fiber-to-the-home or the most modern cable [high-speed internet] service,” Dankberg said. “But the qualification I’m going to make to that is, we want to give that same experience to people who otherwise can’t get it.”

ViaSat 2 will help to turn ViaSat into a bigger regional provider of services that will also span government and enterprise customers while also enhancing its ability to deliver high-quality inflight connectivity as well as broadband service to cruise ships.

It will also amp up competition with Hughes Network Systems, which launched its HughesNet Gen5 service in March, and has already added about 100,000 new and upgrading subscribers to the speedier platform, which matches a 25 Mbps downstream with a 3 Mbps upstream. Gen5 is powered by EchoStar XIX/Jupiter 2, a multi-spot-beam, Ka-band satellite made by Space Systems Loral that launched on Dec. 18, 2016, and complements Hughes’s EchoStar XVII and Spaceway 3 data satellites.

Related: Hughes Tees Up Faster Satellite Broadband Service

Hughes, which has about 1.04 million satellite broadband subs and reaches both U.S. continental coasts plus parts of Alaska, believes it’s playing an important role because terrestrial broadband providers are more limited in how rapidly they can expand and generally don’t put a lot of focus on rural areas, according to Peter Gulla, senior vice president of marketing at Hughes.

Gulla said Hughes is also “finding a lot of opportunity” in areas where the telcos are letting their DSL networks languish as many instead focus on new fixed wireless options.

Still, Hughes will keep its target focused mostly on rural areas and where DSL service is weak, rather than applying marketing dollars and other resources in areas where wireline broadband competition is already strong.

“We are starting to see opportunities in the slow DSL areas,” Gulla said. “But you won’t be seeing us dropping a lot of flyers in New York City trying to convince people that they ought to switch to satellite [broadband]. I think we’re being realistic about what our product is and what it’s good for and what it does and what the value is.”

Though ViaSat is getting ready to raise the speed bar for satellite-delivered broadband, Hughes is not yet making any formal commitments to upgrade its capabilities.

“Right now, 25 [Mbps] seems to be meeting the needs of our customers,” Gulla said. “But that doesn’t mean that’s the end of the line.”

Need for Pricing, Data Flexibility
Beyond speed, other issues remain hot-button competitive factors. Among them: Satellite broadband-service providers will need to be more flexible on pricing and support relaxed data policies if they are to have much success in their traditional markets, even as some of them look to extend beyond rural regions, Jeff Heynen, consulting director and analyst at Kagan, said. Strict and complicated usage caps and data plans have long been sticking points for the satellite services.

Related: FCC OKs OneWeb Satellite Broadband Service

Under policies for ViaSat’s current Exede service, for instance, subscribers get a fixed amount each month of “Priority Data” at speeds of up to 12 Mbps to 25 Mbps, and, once those data buckets are used up, it pivots to slower speeds — between 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps. For its higher-end tiers, ViaSat also supports an unmetered “Free Zone” from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., when traffic tends to be the lightest. ViaSat also lets customers purchase more Priority Data for $10 per gigabyte, or discounts if they purchase buckets of 5 GB, 7 GB or 10 GB.

“In the past, most satellite services that are consumer priced have had hard limits to the amount of bandwidth that you can use,” Dankberg acknowledged. “We’ve been testing, on ViaSat 1, service plans that are virtually unlimited. With ViaSat 2, we’ll be able to make those more common, lower priced and with higher speeds.”

The HughesNet Gen5 service offers data plans ranging from 10 GB to 50 GB per month, before speeds are reduced to about 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps. It also comes with a “Video Data Saver” option that adjusts the bit rate to deliver video in DVD quality. Those customers still have the ability to watch in HD by toggling off the Video Data Saver capability. HughesNet’s data policy also includes “Bonus Zone” hours (from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.), when the customer can use 50 GB per month of free data rather than pulling it from their monthly service plan. HughesNet suggests that Bonus Zone hours are used to download large files such as movies and system updates.

Achieving success in new markets, Heynen of Kagan stressed, will hinge greatly on competitive pricing and the easing of data caps as they face off with competition from wireline internet service providers, as well as emerging LTE- and 5G-powered fixed wireless options that will be capable of delivering hundreds of Megabits of data per second and possibly Gigabit-class speeds.

“As people use more data and OTT, they are going to be very wary of pushing the boundaries of those data caps,” Heynen said. “They have to find a way to make the data caps as well as the monthly pricing reasonable for the service.”

AT&T, for example, is pushing ahead with a big rollout of fixed LTE services. “Out in those rural areas, LTE is a potential competitive threat,” Heynen said, noting that he doesn’t expect satellite broadband to continue to have the most success in its traditional focus areas, serving areas instead without much landline broadband and servicing airplanes and cruise ships.

“I don’t see the cost structure allowing [satellite broadband ISPs] to compete with a traditional DSL, cable or fiber service,” he said. However, he said he does believe satellite broadband services that are equipped with 100 Mbps capability can offer a “reasonable alternative,” particularly as DSL service struggles to deliver speeds any greater than 25 Mbps.

Licking the Latency Issue
Though satellite broadband is poised to deliver speeds that can match up with some of its earthbound rivals, the issue that’s toughest to overcome is latency, which can impact some interactive apps and services such as VoIP and multiplayer gaming.

According to the Federal Communications Commission’s 2016 Measuring Broadband America Fixed Broadband Report, the median latencies of satellite-based broadband services range from 599 milliseconds to 629 milliseconds, versus terrestrial-based broadband services, which range from 12 milliseconds to 58 milliseconds.

“I can’t go against the laws of physics, but I’d like to,” Hughes’s Gulla said. “But the bottom line is that there’s that traveling distance to and from satellite, and at the current distances, you have latency.”

He said Hughes is upfront about that with customers. “We do our best to explain and ask [customers] what they intend to do when they call us. We’re very clear that if you’re doing first-person shooter games, you’re not going to win.”

Other satellite-broadband initiatives are looking to overcome that latency issue.

One prime example is SpaceX, the privately held aerospace firm run by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. USA Today, citing comments from Patricia Cooper, the company’s VP of satellite government affairs, reported that SpaceX is planning to launch 4,425 small satellites via reusable Falcon 9 rockets to support a constellation of lower-latency, low-earth-orbit birds, alongside a proposal for another 7,815 satellites that are even closer to the Earth’s surface.

Additionally, Airbus is planning a fleet of hundreds of small, low-earth-orbit (about 750 miles above the Earth’s surface) satellites in a joint venture with a startup called OneWeb. According to CNN, the joint venture is eyeing one launch every 21 days from French Guiana, with the first expected to lift off in about nine months. Service via the partnership, which includes backing from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Qualcomm and Japan’s SoftBank, is reportedly expected to start in 2019 and to cover the globe by 2020. The FCC approved OneWeb’s request to deliver service in the U.S. in late June.

ViaSat is also casting its eye toward global coverage with its planned set of ViaSat 3 satellites. The first, which will expand and enhance ViaSat’s coverage in the Americas, is planned to launch in 2019, followed in 2020 by a satellite that will cover the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. ViaSat hasn’t announced when it expects to launch its third ViaSat 3 satellite, but it’s slated to provide coverage in the Asia-Pacific region.

Satellite-delivered broadband subscriber totals hardly put a dent in the overall U.S. broadband market, but Hughes Network Systems appears to be making progress in rural areas and other markets that are relatively untouched by terrestrial broadband.

Hughes, a subsidiary of EchoStar, announced this week that it had has become the first the exceed 1 million “active users” in North America for satellite-delivered Internet services. That total factors in Hughes’ retail and wholesale subs and additional users getting service through third-party operator with capacity deals. Corporate cousin Dish Network and  DirecTV are among Hughes’ key partners.

By comparison, the top 17 U.S. cable operators and telcos finished the second quarter with 85.9 million broadband subs, according to Leichtman Research Group.

Hughes’ platform is based on Ka-band satellites, and is now using a fourth-generation system to deliver broadband to residential and business customers.

HughesNet currently offers four tiers that are encumbered with monthly data caps. Its top-end tier, Power MAX, offers 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps, sells for $129.99 per month, and capped at 40 Gigabytes. Connect, it’s starter tier, offers 5 Mbps down/1 Mbps up for $49.99 per  month, and caps usage at 10 GB per month. Hughes is running a promo through September 30 that cuts the monthly subscription price by $10 for the first three months, so long as customers agree to a two-year contract.

“Hughes and its partners are attracting thousands of new subscribers each month as more and more people realize they don’t have to choose between living where they want and staying connected with high-speed Internet access,” said Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes, in a statement. “Today just about anyone in North America can enjoy the many entertainment, business and educational benefits that come with high-quality broadband connectivity.”