Who Buys Satellite Internet? What Real Orders Show About Plans and Speeds

Key findings

The orders come from shoppers who called our call center. People who buy satellite straight from a provider, without that call, are not in the mix. Read the shares as a picture of these orders. The research hub holds the rest of our published data, including the price-term audit.

How satellite internet works

Satellite internet sends your traffic by radio between a dish at the house and a satellite, then down to a ground station that joins the rest of the internet. The dish needs a clear view of the sky. Trees, a steep roof, and a neighbor’s building can block that view. A technician usually mounts the dish and aims it. You do not aim a geostationary dish by hand.

There are two common orbits, and they do not feel the same. A geostationary satellite stays over one spot far above the equator. Every click travels a long way, so pages and calls feel delayed even when the plan name shows a decent download speed. A low-earth-orbit service uses satellites much closer to the ground, so the delay is smaller. This order file is dominated by Viasat and HughesNet, which are the geostationary services people ordered through these calls. Newer services sold straight to the customer are not in this data.

Weather can still knock a dish offline. Heavy rain and wet snow on the dish are the usual cases. A speed in a plan name is the tier that was sold, not a promise of that speed every hour. How home internet reaches a house compares the dish with fiber, cable, and fixed wireless in plain language.

If you already have a dish and you need help with it, call the provider’s own support path from the bill or the app. A sales line is the wrong desk. Why support callers reach a sales line shows how often that mix-up happened.

How many internet buyers choose satellite

55.3% of internet orders in these records were satellite. The base is 59,859 internet orders. That is a large share for a technology many city homes never see. It fits this file because the calls came from the places and the ads that produced them, not from a random sample of United States households. Rural shoppers with no wired offer are more likely to land in a satellite order.

Among the satellite orders themselves, Viasat (including the Exede name used on older orders) was 87.8% and HughesNet was 12.2%. The satellite-order total behind that split is 33,079. Viasat’s count was 29,044. HughesNet’s count was 4,035.

HughesNet is one of the two providers in the satellite orders. You can see whether HughesNet is offered at your address. Starlink is a low-earth-orbit service sold straight to customers, and those direct orders are not in the shares above. You can still see whether Starlink is offered at your address, and you can read where Starlink service is discussed on this site.

Which plans and speeds people ordered

The plan table covers Viasat orders whose plan name was recorded, 7,526 plans. 82.0% of those plans were 25 Mbps or slower. We treated a plan as 25 Mbps or slower when its name ends in 25 or a lower number. Unlimited Silver 25, Unlimited Bronze 12, Unlimited Silver 12, Unlimited Basic 12, Liberty 25, and Unlimited Gold 12 sit in that group. The published share is 82.0%, from the study total, not a fresh sum of the rows.

Unlimited Silver 25 was the single largest plan, at 43.5% (3,271 orders). The stats file records the same result as Unlimited Silver 25 (43.5%). Unlimited Bronze 12 was next. Plans with 30, 50, or 100 in the name were ordered, and each of them is under 10% of Viasat plans in the table. “Other” gathers plan names with fewer than 11 orders so a tiny count is not shown on its own. That row has 13 orders and a share of 0.2%, which is large enough to publish.

What should you do with a 25 Mbps plan name? Write down what the household actually does at once. One video, schoolwork, and email can fit. Two video calls plus a cloud backup often will not. Use the household internet needs tool to list devices before you compare a dish with a fixed-wireless or DSL offer. The tool does not use these order shares. It uses the tasks you enter.

Plan names age. A name that was common in these orders may be gone from the current menu, and a new name may hide a similar speed. Read the broadband label for the address. The download number, the upload number, and any data priority after a threshold matter more than the metal name on the plan.

Install timing

This study’s order file can store a sale date and an install date, and the method drops waits under 0 days or over 90 days as entry errors. The published tables do not include a day count, so this page does not state how long a satellite install took. For the checklist on a wired install day, use the fiber installation checklist.

When satellite makes sense, and when to look at fixed wireless or DSL

Satellite earns a look when the address has no wired offer and fixed wireless does not reach the house. The dish can serve a home that a cable line has never passed. That is the practical case behind a file in which 55.3% of internet orders were satellite.

Ask three questions before you accept a 25 Mbps satellite plan, since 82.0% of these Viasat plans were in that range. Can you see the part of the sky the installer needs? Do you need low delay for games or for several video calls? Is a fixed-wireless antenna or a DSL line available at the same address, even at a similar download speed? Fixed wireless and DSL can still be the better daily connection when the delay of a far satellite gets in the way, even if the download number looks close.

If a wired line shows up later, you do not have to keep the dish forever. Replacing satellite with wired internet walks through keeping the dish until the new line works. How to choose internet service is the wider comparison.

A credit check or a deposit stops some shoppers before any plan is ordered. If that is the worry, read how often credit checks and deposits ended the call before you sit down to apply.

Methodology

The orders were placed with help from our call center. Agents compared home internet from many providers and recorded the provider, the plan, and the sale. This page uses those order rows. It asks how often the order was satellite, how the satellite orders split by provider, and how Viasat plan names split.

The internet-order base is 59,859 orders, from May 2017 through May 2025. The same window covers the Viasat plan share. Dates live in this section only.

A share is a count divided by the group’s total, rounded to one decimal. Satellite’s 55.3% uses all internet orders as the base. The provider shares use satellite orders only. The plan shares use Viasat plans with a name on the order. Plans with fewer than 11 orders are grouped as Other. Orders whose provider could not be identified are excluded. Calls about electricity or gas are excluded.

Names, phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, account numbers, and agent identities were removed before the totals were built. No recording was reviewed. You cannot pick a single household back out of the table.

Counts from 1 to 10 are left blank. A rate needs at least 30 orders. If blanking one cell would reveal it by subtraction, another cell is blanked too. We do not publish a city or a street. State would be the finest geography, and this page stays national for these orders.

These shoppers called a sales line. They are not a random sample of households, so the 55.3% satellite share is not the national market share. Ads and provider programs decide who calls, which is why Viasat is 87.8% of the satellite orders here. Plan names and speeds are as sold at the time. Providers rename plans. Newer satellite services sold direct to the customer are absent from the file.

An install wait, when both dates exist, is the days from the sale to the actual install. Gaps under 0 days or over 90 days are treated as typing errors and dropped. This release does not include that day count, so none is stated above.

InternetService.ai may earn compensation if you order through a link or the phone number on this site. The compensation does not change a count or a share.

Reuse the CSV files with a citation to this page. We recommend Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Read the license.

Download the tables

• Satellite orders by provider (CSV)
• Viasat plan share (CSV)

Corrections go through the contact link in the footer. The editorial methodology explains how a correction is dated.