Geostationary vs low-earth-orbit satellite vs a tower hop: where the delay comes from

The short answer

Delay grows with distance, and geostationary satellites are very far away. Low-earth-orbit service sits much closer, and a tower hop is shortest of all, but only measurements at your address settle the question for you.

Geostationary satellite facts are High Desert Internet Services' own published plan cards (hdiss.net). Low-earth-orbit satellite and tower hop facts are from its own website as read on 2026-10-15, science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/catalog-of-earth-sa. Every speed on both sides is up to. Nothing here is a promise of availability at any address.

Latency is the delay between sending a request and the first part of the answer coming back. It does not change how fast a large file downloads once it is flowing, but it changes how a video call, a remote desktop or a game feels. Here are the figures that can be cited, with their sources and dates, and a plain statement of what cannot.

Why does a geostationary satellite add so much delay?

A geostationary satellite stays over one spot on the equator, which requires an orbit about 36,000 kilometers, or about 22,000 miles, above the surface (NASA Earth Observatory, Catalog of Earth Satellite Orbits). A request from your home goes up to the satellite, down to a ground station, out across the internet, and the answer makes the same trip in reverse. The FCC's Eighth Measuring Broadband America report describes packets traveling approximately 44,500 miles from an earth station to the satellite and back.

The FCC measured the result. Its 2018 report, using 2017 data, put median latencies for satellite broadband at 594 to 612 ms, compared with 12 to 37 ms for terrestrial services, and said the higher latencies of geostationary service may impair the perceived quality of highly interactive applications. The FCC has not published a newer satellite measurement; its Thirteenth Report, from 2023, covers terrestrial providers only.

Why do low-earth-orbit satellites differ?

Low-earth-orbit satellites circle far closer to Earth than geostationary ones, so the signal has much less distance to cover. That is the basic reason a service like Starlink feels different from older satellite internet. Starlink's own pages, read October 15, 2026, publish no latency figure, and the neutral measurements that exist are quarterly reports from firms such as Ookla, which this page does not quote, so no Starlink number appears here. If you see a figure elsewhere, ask who measured it, where and when.

The FCC's 2026 Section 706 Report adds a general caution about satellite service: its usability may be limited by certain factors or during certain periods, resulting in slower speeds and higher latency in remote areas, and reliability may decline during congestion. That is the FCC describing satellite as a category.

What does a tower hop add?

In a fixed wireless network, the home's antenna talks to a tower on the ground, usually miles away rather than thousands. High Desert's own FAQ describes the difference this way: the distances covered are much smaller than a satellite's, so the response times are much better, and it says its wireless system is typically under 50ms. That sentence is the company's statement. It is not an independent test, and this site prints no other latency figure for High Desert.

The FCC does not test tower-based providers in its reports, so there is no neutral number to set beside it. Other companies publish claims of their own, which you can read on the Net NV and Avant Wireless pages, labeled as theirs. A neutral description from BroadbandNow says fixed wireless has relatively low latency, which makes online gaming and video conferencing feasible, and that the antenna and the provider's ground station must have a direct line of sight.

Which figures here can I rely on, and which are claims?

Three kinds of statement appear on this page. Measurements by the FCC, such as 594 to 612 ms and 12 to 37 ms, come from published reports with dates. Physical facts, such as the orbit height, come from NASA. Company statements, such as High Desert's own sentence about its wireless system, are labeled as the company's. If a source you meet quotes a much larger or much smaller number for any of these, check its date and who measured it. The distance to use for the satellite round trip is the FCC's approximately 44,500 miles.

How can I test my own connection?

Delay is easy to measure. Run a ping test to a nearby server from a wired computer, at a quiet hour and a busy hour, and keep the numbers. The guide on what is latency explains ping, the ping test for support page shows the steps, and gaming, NAT and ping covers questions to ask any provider. For comparing the companies themselves, see Starlink, HughesNet and Viasat. To find out whether a tower can see your roof, use the address check.

How does the FCC flag latency in its December 2025 data?

Every row in the FCC Broadband Data Collection carries a low-latency flag: on when the provider's service keeps round trips at or under 100 milliseconds, off when it does not. In the December 31, 2025 data for the six counties (files read October 16, 2026), the flag is off on every Viasat and HughesNet row, both geostationary, and on for Starlink's low-orbit rows across all 243,958 locations.

Land-based filers, wired and fixed wireless, carry the low-latency flag on about nine in ten of their location rows in the six counties. The flag is a pass or fail at 100 milliseconds and carries no measured number, so it separates the orbit types rather than ranking providers. High Desert publishes no latency figure, and none is given here for it.