How Close Is LEO Satellite to Fibre Performance?

Written by Elise Currie. Reviewed by Mike Bamford. Published 30 September 2026. 7 minute read.

In short: close enough for most business applications. Starlink’s published specifications put latency at 25 to 50 milliseconds, against generally below 8 ms for full fibre in Ofcom’s testing and around 600 ms or more for traditional geostationary satellite. Fibre is still quicker, but low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite now handles cloud software, video calls, VoIP and payments comfortably. That makes it a credible primary connection where fibre isn’t available and a strong independent backup where it is.

For many business and IT leaders, the words “satellite internet” still create a fairly predictable picture: remote locations, slow connections, noticeable delays, and a technology you use when there is no other option. That perception is understandable. It is also increasingly out of date.

The development of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks has materially changed what satellite connectivity can deliver. For businesses operating remote sites, waiting for fibre, or looking to remove a single point of connectivity failure, that change matters. The real question is no longer simply whether satellite can provide an internet connection. It is whether modern satellite connectivity is capable of becoming part of serious business infrastructure.

Why did satellite internet have such high latency?

To understand what has changed, it helps to understand why traditional satellite connectivity had high latency in the first place. Latency is the time it takes data to travel across a network and is measured in milliseconds. For applications such as cloud platforms, video conferencing, VoIP and other interactive services, it can have a noticeable impact on performance.

Traditional geostationary (GEO) satellites operate approximately 35,786 kilometres above Earth, and that distance creates an unavoidable physical constraint. A signal needs to travel from the user terminal to the satellite, back towards Earth and through the network, and the response then needs to make the return journey. Even before routing, processing and other network delays are considered, the enormous distance involved creates hundreds of milliseconds of propagation delay.

In practice, traditional satellite connections can experience round-trip latency of around 600 ms or more. For some applications, that is perfectly acceptable. For others, it isn’t, and this is where the historical perception of satellite being “slow” largely comes from.

How does LEO satellite reduce latency?

Low Earth Orbit networks work differently. Rather than placing satellites almost 36,000 kilometres above Earth, LEO satellites operate below 2,000 kilometres. Starlink satellites orbit at roughly 480 to 550 kilometres, as SpaceX is lowering much of its constellation from 550 km to 480 km during 2026. OneWeb, the other major LEO network, orbits at around 1,200 kilometres. Brdy supplies both, and our OneWeb vs Starlink comparison goes through the technical differences. That dramatically reduces the physical distance a signal needs to travel, and therefore the latency.

Starlink’s published specifications put typical latency at 25 to 50 ms, although it can be higher in regions far from a ground station or when a terminal is under heavy load. That is a very different proposition from the hundreds of milliseconds historically associated with geostationary satellite connectivity.

It means modern satellite connectivity can support applications that many organisations would once have been reluctant to run over satellite, including:

• Cloud-based business applications
• Video conferencing
• VoIP
• Payment systems
• CCTV and remote monitoring
• Multi-site connectivity
• Day-to-day web and SaaS applications

It does not mean satellite and fibre are identical. They aren’t. But treating all satellite connectivity as inherently high-latency is no longer a sensible basis for an infrastructure decision.

How fast is fibre, really?

There is another part of this discussion that is often overlooked: fibre is fast, but it is not instantaneous. Light travels through optical fibre at approximately 200,000 kilometres per second, which means every 1,000 kilometres of fibre introduces roughly 5 ms of propagation delay in one direction.

That isn’t the same as saying a 1,000-kilometre fibre connection will have 5 ms of end-to-end latency. Real network performance also depends on the route taken, switching, network equipment, congestion, processing and other factors, and the same principle applies to satellite.

In everyday use, UK full fibre is very responsive. Ofcom’s last home broadband performance report found full fibre lines generally below 8 ms, compared with around 24 ms for older ADSL copper lines. So on raw latency fibre is still ahead of LEO satellite, but by tens of milliseconds rather than the hundreds that separated it from older satellite.

This is why simple comparisons between fibre and satellite can be misleading. The more useful question is not which technology wins an abstract speed comparison, but what performance and resilience the business actually requires.

The business conversation should be about risk, not milliseconds

Bandwidth matters. Latency matters. But neither tells you whether your connectivity strategy is resilient.

A fast fibre connection provides little value if it isn’t installed when a new site goes live, and a high-performance connection with no independent failover still represents a single point of failure.

Does satellite need to replace fibre to be valuable?

This is perhaps the biggest misconception. The discussion is often framed as satellite versus fibre, and in many business environments that is the wrong comparison. Fibre can remain an excellent primary connectivity option where it is available, reliable and commercially sensible.

LEO satellite can perform a different role. It can provide connectivity while a site waits for fibre. It can connect locations where terrestrial infrastructure is difficult or uneconomic to install. It can provide an independent resilience layer if the primary terrestrial connection fails. And in some environments, it can operate as the primary connection where traditional infrastructure simply isn’t practical.

This is how Brdy sets it up: LEO satellite either as the main connection where fibre isn’t practical, or as failover alongside an existing fixed line, so the business keeps running if one of them drops.

Satellite broadband is not dependent on local street cabinets or terrestrial cables, which reduces exposure to issues such as cable theft, damaged infrastructure and roadworks. Starlink operates through a large constellation of low Earth orbit satellites, with terminals able to automatically switch between satellites to maintain a stable connection, and its Local and Global Priority plans carry a 99.9% network availability Service Level Agreement (SLA). As with any connectivity service, performance and availability can be affected by factors such as installation, obstructions and environmental conditions.

The objective is not to prove that one technology is universally better than another. The objective is to design connectivity around the operational requirements and risks of the business.

The technology has moved faster than perception

This is the more interesting issue. Many organisations are evaluating modern satellite connectivity using assumptions formed around an earlier generation of technology, and that creates a blind spot.

Satellite is still dismissed in some boardrooms and IT departments as an emergency solution or a connection of last resort. Meanwhile, businesses continue to tolerate vulnerable single-line connectivity, long fibre installation delays and repeated outages because those problems feel familiar.

Familiar does not mean low risk. Modern businesses increasingly depend on cloud platforms for communications, payments, ERP, CRM, security, monitoring and day-to-day operations. Connectivity is therefore no longer simply another utility contract. It is infrastructure, and infrastructure needs resilience.

How should a business evaluate its connectivity?

Rather than asking “Is satellite as fast as fibre?”, a better set of questions might be:

“What does this site need to operate effectively?”
“What happens to the business if our primary connection disappears?”
“How quickly could we recover?”
“And are we comfortable with that level of exposure?”

For some organisations, fibre will provide the answer. For others, satellite or advanced wireless connectivity will. For many, the right answer will be a combination of technologies designed so that the failure of one does not stop the business.

That is the real significance of LEO. It has not simply made satellite internet faster. It has expanded the role satellite can realistically play within business connectivity, from a connection of last resort to a credible component of resilient infrastructure. And for businesses where going offline has a genuine operational or financial consequence, that is worth reviewing before the next outage forces the conversation.

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