The Arctic region has largely been left out of the broadband arena in the past due to the high cost of building last-mile broadband infrastructure. The primary broadband available in the region has been provided for decades by Iridium Communications, which provided only low-bandwidth connections capable of supporting satellite phones and low-bandwidth monitoring devices. The lack of broadband looks to be changing as multiple satellite companies are targeting the region as a good business opportunity.

Starlink and OneWeb already have polar-orbiting satellites that can serve the region. In fact, the original OneWeb business plan focused on the Arctic as its first priority due to the lack of competition.

Telesat has negotiated to connect to indigenous communities in the Arctic through a partnership with the Canadian government. The government has already provided some grants and announced a financing deal last year that will invest $690 million in preferred equity and $790 million in loans to enable Telesat Lightspeed to complete its low-orbit satellite constellation. The government will also receive warrants that can be exchanged in the future for additional shares of Telesat stock. This adds to the $400 million provided by the government of Quebec. The low-orbit constellation will begin with 298 satellites positioned to deliver speeds up to a gigabit across Canada.

SES plans to serve the Arctic with a fleet of medium-earth-orbit satellites that should start launching by the end of the year. MEO satellites deploy in orbits higher than 1,200 miles but closer than the geostationary satellites at 22,000 miles above the earth. The biggest challenge for these satellites is finding orbits that avoid the high-energy Van Allen radiation belts. The SES business plan is to provide high-bandwidth connections to remote places and, in addition to the Arctic, will be pursuing broadband for cruise ships, cellular towers, and government networks.

The Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) is being built by Northop Grumman and is a joint venture between Inmarsat, the British satellite operator, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, and the U.S. Air Force. These satellites are aimed at providing cellular telephone service and also supporting the military. Two satellites are scheduled to launch by the end of this year and will have highly elliptical orbits that will vary between 5,000 and 27,000 miles above the earth. The orbits can be changed to avoid radiation storms.

The Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) announced plans to launch four satellites in highly elliptical paths within a few years to serve the far north polar regions. I have to wonder if these plans are on hold due to the severe economic sanctions in place against the country.

Satellite broadband is an awesome solution for places where there are likely to be no alternatives. I understand why rural residents of the U.S. are flocking to Starlink since, for many of them, it’s the only workable broadband solution on the horizon. I continue to wonder how satellite broadband will stay competitive in the lower forty-eight after the many grant-funded networks are finally built. But there will always be homes in the U.S. out of reach of landline networks or customers that don’t like the landline ISPs, so it would not be surprising to see the satellite companies with a small but steady customer base south of the Arctic for the long-haul.

But satellite broadband ought to dominate the Arctic for decades to come. It can bring decent bandwidth to remote places that may never be candidates for building landline networks. It will be an interesting change for the area as it goes from barely connected to fully connected.