Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) or Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO) can enable ubiquitous Internet connectivity anywhere there is line-of-sight to the satellite without obstruction. However, because of the distance from the modem to the satellite, the transmission will have larger latency compared to other terrestrial Internet connections. Satellite throughput can also be adversely affected by weather, motion of the modem or handovers between satellites.

Satcom (Satellite communications) remains the only option in certain situations including rural areas, remote locations or defense use cases. Mission-critical applications, especially applications that leverage TCP protocol, or real-time applications, are known to suffer over links with high latency such as satellite. Broadband bonding satellite modems together, or bonding a satellite modem with other types of Internet connections, will significantly improve the application performance.