Who is best satellite internet provider

Packages also come with more data -- up to GB -- though, similar to HughesNet, you may find your data "deprioritized" if you go over your monthly data allowance. Finally, Viasat swerves once again when it comes to equipment. It used to be the case that Viasat didn't allow you to buy equipment.

Read more about Viasat. When eccentric billionaire Elon Musk isn't garnering headlines with his Neuralink brain implant project or asking on Twitter whether he should sell Tesla stock to pay taxes , he's making some noteworthy progress with his Starlink satellite internet project. Granted, this satellite provider is still in a beta test -- meaning, it's not available to everyone but currently to just over , active users -- but the early results, as shared by our own John Kim , are promising.

First, at Mbps, the max download speeds are higher than those offered by HughesNet and Viasat. In fact, Musk boasted in February that Starlink should be able to hit speeds closer to Mbps by the end of It also features a latency between 20 to 50 milliseconds compared to the more typical range of ms for HughesNet and Viasat. Second, Starlink will keep things as simple as possible by going with only one satellite internet plan offering a satellite dish and router for an internet signal.

Once you consider the decent upload speed, these are pretty considerable upgrades for anyone stuck with satellite internet. Those facts could certainly change once Starlink emerges from its beta program, but they're intriguing aspects of the pitch that could help set it apart from the competition.

Read our hands-on experience with Starlink. Stay tuned to CNET for the latest developments with Starlink as it presses further into its beta test which is scheduled to end very soon and aims to expand its coverage. But it should also be mentioned that further disruption may come from another multibillionaire, Jeff Bezos, as Amazon's Project Kuiper also aims to enter the field.

While nowhere near the beta stage that Starlink has achieved thus far, Project Kuiper did turn some heads when its prototype delivered speeds up to Mbps in recent iterations. Innovations from low Earth orbit satellites will be just one piece of the puzzle of better delivering the internet option to the millions of households still unable to find a reliable broadband source. The best satellite Internet provider is Viasat. When comparing different service providers it is best to look at multiple options and to find what is most important to the customer.

If you live in a rural area or even just outside city lines, you may be struggling to find a suitable internet provider. Just like anybody else seeking access to the web, you probably want affordability, reliability, and speed. Luckily, Viasat satellite internet provides all that and more. Viasat is considered one of the best satellite internet providers in the nation—its advanced satellite technology reaches almost everywhere in the United States.

While many cable internet providers cannot guarantee good connection in rural areas, Viasat makes it a priority to provide quality internet access to those living outside urban areas. Not only is Viasat trusted by residential clients, but businesses and government agencies rely on its services as well.

Unlike Viasat, HughesNet states plainly in its basic 10 GB data plan that if you go over 10 GB within the billing month, it will throttle down your internet speed from 25 Mbps to 1—3 Mbps. It might be nice to have some connection for your cabin in the woods, huh? Flat rate pricing? Fast download speeds? No data caps—ergo, no speed throttling? Plus, Starlink is prone to outages. Plus, it has much lower latency than most satellite internet providers although it still drags compared to land-based internet services.

You just might want to wait a bit longer for things to really get off the ground. Get it? In the case of satellite internet, your costs will often go up based on both the internet speeds and the data allowance you select.

Download speeds, or bandwidth, affect how quickly you can download online content. The listed download speed for an internet package gets split among every user in your home, so make sure to invest in a bigger package if multiple people use your internet.

A 25 Mbps connection will be fast for one person but slow for a five-person house. No matter how much bandwidth you pay for, satellite internet is usually slower than land-based internet services because of latency. Bandwidth is how much information your internet transfers at once, while latency is how long that info takes to travel from a server to your computer.

Check out our latency vs. Since data sent over satellite information has to go to space and back, satellite internet always comes with a lot of latency.

Data allowances are how much data you can use per month before the carrier slows down your internet. While regular internet browsing requires little data, you can quickly hit a low cap with activities like regularly streaming movies.

You might be able to get away with a small data package if you use your internet only to check your email. But even scrolling through Instagram takes a bunch of data, so with satellite internet, you browse at your own risk.

The provider does not employ the use of traditional data caps, but instead, has thresholds that deprioritize your internet traffic once they are met.

When that happens, the end result is functionally similar to a hard data cap — your speeds will be reduced significantly. The biggest upside is that Viasat offers a much wider range of data allotments than HughesNet currently does, giving them an edge in this category.

HughesNet is sticking to its guns as far as its data caps are concerned. But download caps are a major concern in the world of gaming, because in the past few years, game download sizes have grown significantly. Games that are between 50 GB and GB in size are not unusual these days, and that means you could potentially blow through your entire HughesNet data allotment by downloading a single game.

If HughesNet adopts a threshold system, the company might be worth a second look in this category. Until then, Viasat is the better option. Viasat is a tad more expensive but gives you the better value for your money. The company has speed tiers for whatever you have in mind, and delivers those speeds regardless of how much data you use.