LEO vs GEO Satellite Broadband for Business

For years, “satellite broadband” meant slow, laggy and expensive. That reputation came from geostationary (GEO) satellites. Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite is a different technology, and for business sites it changes the answer completely.

The short answer

For most UK business sites, LEO satellite is the better primary connection. It has far lower latency, handles video calls and cloud software well, and uses a compact self-aligning dish. GEO remains a strong choice for backup, telemetry, fixed installations and organisations that want a second satellite operator. We supply both.

It is all about distance

GEO satellites sit around 36,000 km above the equator. At that height a satellite orbits at the same speed the Earth turns, so it appears fixed in the sky. That is convenient for pointing a dish, but every piece of data has to travel up and back down that enormous distance, twice for a round trip.

LEO satellites orbit only a few hundred kilometres up. They move quickly across the sky, so a network needs many of them and the dish tracks them electronically. The payoff is a much shorter path for your data.

Why latency matters more than speed

Latency is the delay before data arrives. On GEO satellite the round trip is often over 500 milliseconds. You notice it on every video call, every VoIP conversation and every time a cloud application waits for a response.

LEO latency is typically tens of milliseconds, in the same range as many fixed broadband lines. That is why Teams, Zoom, hosted phones and remote desktops work on LEO satellite in a way they never really did on GEO.

Where GEO still fits

GEO is a mature technology from long-established operators, with fixed dish pointing and no dependence on a single constellation. Latency matters far less for telemetry, monitoring, backup links and store-and-forward traffic, which is where GEO earns its place.

It is also a sensible way to add diversity. A site running LEO as its main connection can use GEO or cellular as a backup that relies on a completely different network.

What LEO does not solve

LEO is not perfect. The dish needs a wide, clear view of the sky, so trees and tall buildings can cause short dropouts. Capacity is shared across users in an area. Addresses are shared (CGNAT), so you cannot port-forward to devices on site without a different setup.

The practical answer to the first two is a second path. A router carrying LEO satellite as the main connection and 4G/5G as automatic backup keeps the site online through the gaps. For the third, cloud-managed systems work normally, and inbound access needs planning up front.

Next steps

If you are weighing up satellite for a site, see our business satellite broadband page, or send us the postcode and we will check sky view and signal before you commit.