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Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has said there is “no way” Starlink could ever match the performance of the NBN fibre network.
In comments reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, the Labor minister also claimed the SpaceX service was turning away customers because some areas had reached their capacity of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites in orbit.
“There’s only so many birds in that constellation that can be above a particular place in the sky at any given time,” she said. “So while it does fulfil the needs of some customers, it’s not suitable to all.”
Minister Rowland’s intervention comes with reports that customers are switching to Starlink because they were either struggling to connect to the traditional fibre network or receiving poor performance from NBN’s own satellites, Sky Muster.
“There is no way that Starlink would be able to deliver the speeds, capability and low latency that is delivered by fibre,” Minister Rowland said.
“It’s not an equity product. It has a higher set-up cost. It does have higher ongoing costs, which some people are willing to pay for.
“But that does not align with the mission of the NBN, which has always been about providing equality of opportunity between metro and regional areas.”
NBN first went live in Australia in 2011 and aims to offer significantly higher speeds than traditional broadband via fibre cables.
However, it has been repeatedly criticised for its slow and patchy rollout and has accumulated losses of $35 billion since its construction. Starlink, meanwhile, has signed up 200,000 customers despite only launching locally in 2021.
In October 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister Rowland announced a $2.4 billion investment in the company that owns NBN and another $3 billion this month.
The latest investment aims to upgrade the fibre-to-the-node connections, providing an additional 622,000 new fibre connections. More than half are targeted for regional and rural areas.
“Labor created the National Broadband Network, and only Labor will finish the NBN,” PM Albanese said.
The news comes after Space Connect reported how NBN’s own satellite internet performance is so poor it would struggle to consistently play videos or handle online computer games.
The findings, revealed in a damning Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report, showed NBN geostationary service’s latency averaged 664.9 milliseconds across all hours, compared to 29.8 milliseconds on LEO rival Starlink.
The findings are a further blow to Sky Muster, with critics arguing the federal government made the wrong call by launching two geostationary satellites for $2 billion in 2015.
“While the latency is stable during busy hour congestion, its high duration is likely to hinder activities that require real-time responsiveness,” said the Measuring Broadband Australia program on Sky Muster’s service.
“Users relying on Sky Muster for such applications may experience delays, but the service remains predictable in its performance.”
LEO satellite constellations, such as Starlink, offer quicker services than traditional geostationary satellites, such as NBN Sky Muster, because they are closer to Earth.
However, the lower height also means LEOs effectively cover a smaller area and, therefore, need to operate in larger, connected constellations to be effective.
Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, has the advantage of being able to launch thousands of satellites without paying external customers because it operates its own reusable rockets.
It’s currently thought there are more than 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit.
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