Ofcom UK Report Claims Satellite Broadband is Bad

The communications regulator, Ofcom UK, has quitely published a new “small-scale report” that investigated the quality of experience and user satisfaction when using broadband Satellite ISP services for applications just as online video gaming, Virtual Private Networks, video/audio streaming and Voice-over-IP.

Although three out of four applications indicated that terrestrial broadband was superior to satellite broadband, it is important to bear in mind that the one application, where the satellite service outperformed the terrestrial service, is likely to be the most fundamental online activity. It is beyond the scope of this study to indicate what services rural users are most interested in; but, such an analysis would allow the results of the four applications to be combined at the same time into a weighted sum.

The important thing to stress

The important thing to stress, but, is that QoE [Quality of Experience] is application dependent, to cut a long story short tightly defining the importance of the various applications to rural community users will in large part dictate the attractiveness of satellite broadband.