Satellite Broadband - What Speeds Can I Expect?

If you have read my previous post you will know that before Christmas we installed an SES satellite broadband system to service our office in the Limousin.

One of the reasons for doing this was to measure the speeds actually being achieved so that we can share this information with potential clients. It is after all the question we get asked most!

The first thing I did after activating the system was perform a speed check. At 3 pm on a Saturday I was pleasantly surprised to be hitting the 20Mbps download speeds advertised:

Speeds achieved on the 6th December at 15.05

I then downloaded a printer driver from the HP website that I had been meaning to do for ages. The 143 mb file downloaded in 1 minute 12 seconds - a job that would have taken around half an hour on my landline connection.

I have been monitoring the connection speeds on an ad-hoc basis and will publish a journal in a separate post. In general, however, the system has exceeded my expectations.

In the daytime when I do most of my work connection speeds are fairly consistently in the 16 Mbps to 20 Mbps range.

The slowest time is late afternoon and evening when the network is at its busiest. Speeds at this time can drop to between 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps.

Speeds achieved at peak time - 22nd December at 18.08 

Speeds achieved at peak time - 28th December at 16.56

Even at peak times the SES system far outperforms the landline connection we have in the Limousin both in terms of speed & reliability.

I now use the satellite as my default connection & have added the Freezone option which allows unlimited overnight usage. I use this mostly to download upgrades for the various devices we have here, which can be large files. Using Freezone means that none of this eats in to the monthly allowance.