Although new customers are not being taken on, Elon Musk’s Starlink is now providing satellite internet in the UAE – and more providers could join it in the marketplace.
As reported in The National, Starlink has been given a decade-long licence by UAE regulators, providing an alternative to fibre internet services from du or e&.
Customers in the emirates who signed up to Starlink have reported receiving the company’s hardware in recent days and are hoping to begin using the services shortly.
Andrea Faggiano, a partner at the Arthur D Little consultancy in Dubai, said he expected satellite internet services would likely take 10 to 15 per cent of the overall internet market, although it could be higher.
“I would say in 15 years, the satellite technology will be massive – 15 per cent. That may even be a conservative number,” he said. “It’s definitely a serious competitor.”
Reports from earlier this month quoting Starlink indicate that the company had 12 million satellite internet customers globally in the second quarter of this year, double the number of a year earlier.
Market research companies such as Grand View Research have highlighted challenges to deployment, including high initial deployment costs and delays in signal.
Despite such hurdles, Grand View Research states that the global satellite internet market, currently valued at around $13.3 billion a year, is likely to grow to $35.7 billion in 2033 as investment continues in the low Earth orbit satellites that the technology requires.
“I do expect the market to grow, at least for the next decade,” said Dr Nitinder Mohan, an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He said that as well as individual consumers, key customers include airlines and ship operators.
In recent years satellite internet services have become an affordable mainstream option and with multiple providers operating in different markets, but Starlink remains the global leader.
Among the new satellite internet providers will be Amazon's Leo service, which is expected to make services available to consumers late this year or in early 2027.
Blue Origin, another company linked to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is also entering the sector through its TeraWave network. It is focusing on large-scale corporate and government use.
Starlink is not taking on new customers in the UAE, saying the service is “at capacity”, but it has advertised services costing from Dh300 a month.
Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Jordan and Israel are also among more than 160 countries where Starlink is offered.
In the UK, for example, customers can sign up to a 100 megabits (Mbps) per second service for £40 (about Dh199) per month, 200 Mbps for £60 (Dh298) and 400 Mbps for £80 (Dh397).
Prices in Germany are lower and, in France, they are lower still, starting at as little as €35 (Dh149) per month.
At capacity
Starlink is at capacity in the UAE because the company’s satellite network can only service a certain number of people in any one location.
Although Starlink has enough satellite capacity to service millions of users, the users are spread across the globe and are using different satellites.
“You cannot service a huge density of people but [you can provide services to] more people as long as these users are spread across the world,” said Prof Nishanth Sastry, of the school of computer science and electronic engineering at the University of Surrey in the UK. “So there’s increasing capacity by adding more satellites.”
With Starlink launching satellites regularly and a new generation set to be inaugurated, capacity will grow and the company will probably be able to take on new UAE customers.
“The only way you can get more capacity is by adding more larger satellites with larger antennae,” Dr Mohan said. “Starlink is deploying its Version 3 satellites. These can resolve some of these capacity restrictions.”
While performance is continuing to improve, Dr Mohan said for most consumers with good fibre internet coverage, the benefits of switching may be limited. In the UAE, fibre internet providers advertise much higher speeds than those claimed by Starlink.
Why switch to satellite internet?
“If you have existing fibre connectivity, it’s likely you’re not going to gain much,” Dr Mohan said. “If you’re in one of the hard-to-reach areas, for example a mountainous region or desert, where you cannot make a fibre roll-out, satellite connectivity can be a boon.”
Prof Sastry, a Starlink subscriber, said in his experience the quality of the satellite internet service is similar to wired or cellular services, albeit with brief interruptions.
“It’s very nearly the same as any other terrestrial connection … I can get 100 Mbps,” he said, adding that he is able to stream movies, for example.
“The main difference from a completely wired connection is because it’s satellite, usually there can be some variation in performance based on weather.” He said latency – the time it takes for data to travel to or from a user – can double as a result of rain or large amounts of snow.
“In more extreme environments you can get significant degradation of the performance compared to what you might get from a terrestrial [internet],” he said.
Another issue is that the connection is likely to move from one satellite to another every three to six minutes.
He said when there is this handover there can be “slight glitches” that might be noticeable on a Zoom call, for example. There is also, he said, a risk of “minor degradations in performance” when gaming.
