For years, if your site was off the fibre map, geostationary satellite broadband — Tooway (Eutelsat's KA-SAT service) or Viasat — was often the only game in town. It got sites online. But the technology behind those services is now a generation behind, and if you're still running one, you're almost certainly paying more for less than you need to. Here's why, and what a modern upgrade looks like.
Why old satellite broadband holds you back
- High latency. Geostationary satellites sit ~35,786 km up, so every request makes a round trip of that distance and back — around 600–700 ms. That makes VoIP calls painful, VPNs sluggish, remote desktop laggy and any real-time control frustrating.
- Data caps & contention. Legacy plans often throttle after a monthly allowance and slow to a crawl at peak times.
- Weather sensitivity. Ka-band services are prone to "rain fade" in heavy weather.
- Ageing hardware. Modems and dishes installed years ago are increasingly unsupported, and some legacy platforms are being wound down entirely.
- No usable inbound access. Like most consumer satellite, you're typically behind CGNAT, so remote access, CCTV and VPNs into the site don't work.
What's changed
Two things. First, low-earth-orbit satellite — Starlink — orbits ~500 km up instead of 35,000, cutting latency to roughly 20–40 ms: a night-and-day difference for anything interactive. Second, 4G/5G coverage and hardware have matured to the point where cellular is a genuinely strong bearer, either on its own or as backup. (For the detail on why orbit height matters so much, see geostationary vs low-earth-orbit satellite.)
The upgrade we do
We don't just swap a dish. We design a resilient, managed connection that fixes the old system's weaknesses:
- Starlink as the primary bearer — low latency, high throughput, no punishing caps.
- 4G/5G LTE failover — so a single outage never takes the site offline (see Backup & Failover).
- A fixed static public IP — even multiple IPs if you need them — so remote access, VPNs, CCTV and SCADA all work, and survive a failover.
- Managed and monitored — we watch it 24/7 so problems are caught before you notice them.
How the migration works
It's straightforward and low-risk. We start with a site survey to confirm clear sky-view and mobile signal, design the right primary/backup combination, then install and cut over — often keeping the old service running until the new one is proven. Most single-site upgrades are done in a day.
Worth it?
If your Tooway or Viasat connection still does everything you need, there's no rush. But if calls drop, remote access doesn't work, the bill feels steep, or the kit is getting long in the tooth, a modern LEO-plus-LTE setup will feel like a different site — faster, more reliable, and finally reachable from head office.
Not sure what your site can get? Request a quote and we'll spec the right upgrade.