Satellite Service Battles Lag

The problem is latency: the time it takes an information request traveling at the speed of light to go from your computer to the satellite, be retransmitted to the satellite provider's operations center, and for the response to be uploaded to the satellite and retransmitted to your computer.

All systems have a certain amount of latency, of course, but terrestrial signals transmitted by wire or microwave almost never have to travel more than a couple thousand miles.

With satellites used for U.S. internet service stationed approximately 23,000 miles above the equator, each information/response packet has to make a round trip of about 92,000 miles, producing a noticeable lag -- about 0.25 seconds -- in applications that require near-instantaneous actions.

those quater second second gaps (if everything is working properly) are enough to be noticeable, and throw off mental cues in conversation so that speach appears fumbled, and people dont seem to be replying, the hand off signals that people use in conversation break down with these gaps thrown in, and conversational cues have to be handled conciously. which destroys some of the meaning transfered by conversation.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.