5 Reasons Why Your Satellite Internet Is Slow—and How to Fix It

Satellite internet service isn’t the fastest in the world, but it’s often the only choice for rural areas. Still, satellite service should give you enough speed for everyday internet activities. Even the slowest satellite internet plans deliver download speeds of 12 Mbps, which should be fast enough for internet browsing, email, video conferencing, and occasional streaming. If these everyday activities are not working on your internet-connected device, you have a problem to solve.

Jump to:

• Misaligned or blocked dish
• Router slowing down internet
• Too many devices connected to Wi-Fi
• Running out of data
• Malware or viruses
• FAQ

Satellite internet quality heavily depends on your dish's visibility with your provider's satellites in Earth's orbit. If the dish isn't pointed in the optimal direction, you're not catching the best signal. Also, if there are dense objects between the satellites and the dish (buildings, trees, mountains), it will greatly interfere with the signal. 

When first installing and setting up your satellite internet, positioning is key to getting the best speed and reliability. 

It is critical to ensure that your dish and the rest of the required equipment are correctly installed. Luckily, two leading satellite internet providers offer free installation when you lease their equipment. Hughesnet and Viasat have professional dish installers come to your home to set up everything, including the dish alignment. They use specialized equipment to determine where their Geosynchronous satellites are in the sky, creating a direct line of sight with the dish. 

If you feel like you're getting slower than promised speeds or cut-outs in the signal, consult the companies right away to determine if there's a better install location. They may or may not charge you for additional visits. Dishes can also become unaligned during severe weather events like heavy wind or snow. Sometimes, dishes are still aligned but could be blocked by snow accumulation. Read more about keeping your dishes clear of snow. 

Unlike Hughesnet and Viasat, Starlink is completely self-installed, so you must take alignment and preventing interference into your own hands. Fortunately, Starlink is intuitive in that regard, providing you with the tools to install it correctly.

When setting up your dish, the Starlink mobile app provides an obstruction scanner that determines if it is affected by surrounding objects. Read more about installing your Starlink here.

With Starlink, you rarely have to worry about snow. Starlink dishes have self-heating feature that will melt snow and ice off the surface of the dish.

All satellite internet companies provide a modem and router combo unit. The equipment provided is usually fast enough to support the fastest possible satellite speeds, but it’s still possible to have modem or router-related problems.

Slowing can happen when the router/modem unit is too far from where you use the internet. It’s also possible that the wireless band your router is operating on is too congested. If you live near neighbors, they could use the same channel (or band) to broadcast their Wi-Fi network, causing some slowing and interference.

A simple test lets you find out if your slow internet speeds are due to router issues. First, run an internet speed test with a laptop or computer connected to Wi-Fi. Next, connect a laptop or computer to your modem with an ethernet cable and disconnect the Wi-Fi. Now, recheck the internet speed. If your speeds are significantly faster when connected with an ethernet cable, the slowing is due to Wi-Fi issues.

You’ll get the fastest speeds if your router/modem combo is located in the center of your home. Using your device next to your router/modem will give you the fastest speeds.

You can try switching your router to a different band if your internet isn't performing well. Satellite routers give you access to two bands: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Usually, 5GHz will be faster and should be used if you get slow speeds. However, the 2.4 GHz might occasionally perform better if the 5 GHz gets interference from your neighbors’ networks. The 2.4 GHz also passes through walls better than 5 GHz.

Another cause of slow internet speed is overcrowding. If you have too many devices connected to the internet at the same time, speeds will just get slower and slower. Indirectly, the number of devices can further slow your internet speed by using up your priority data and throttle you for the rest of the month.

To remedy slowing caused by overcrowding, minimize the number of connected devices online. This includes laptops, computers, tablets, gaming systems, smart TVs, home security systems, and smartphones. Even DVRs can use internet data.

Disconnect devices from the internet if you don’t need them consistently. Turn off Wi-Fi on laptops and other devices when not in use. And if you have satellite internet, you might want to rethink your dreams of having a smart home—at least for the near future.

You can minimize data use on your phone by keeping phones on roaming Wi-Fi rather than connecting to your home network. As long as you have a good cell phone connection inside your home, you can watch video streaming with your phone instead of using laptops and avoid maxing out your home data plan.

A common reason for slow satellite internet speeds is exceeding your data allotment. Hughesnet satellite internet limits the full-speed data you can use monthly to between 100 and 200 GB per month (the amount varies by plan). Companies often refer to full-speed data as “priority data” to distinguish it from the super-slow data you’re stuck with after exceeding your limit.

If you exceed your priority data limit before the month's end, you may still have unlimited data (depending on your plan). But your data will be much slower than usual—in most cases, it slows down to 1 to 3 Mbps or less. With speeds this slow, you’ll have difficulty streaming video or doing a video call. 

Viasat and Starlink don't have hard data caps and claim to provide unlimited data. However, they have soft caps and will deprioritize your bandwidth if you exceed normal data usage within a month. Viasat's allotment is 850GB, and Starlink does not disclose how much is too much.

If you have run out of priority data and you’re struggling to connect to an online class, there are some quick fixes and some preventative measures you should take.

Depending on your plan, you can buy extra data as needed. So, for many customers, buying more data is the solution to running out of data. Hughesnet calls this buying data tokens, but we usually don’t recommend buying extra data unless it’s essential or an occasional splurge. Many satellite customers we’ve talked to ended up burning dollars each month in additional data. Paying extra is expensive—to the tune of $3 per 2GB.

So, we recommend satellite internet customers get a generous data plan and keep data usage as low as possible rather than splurging on extra monthly data. To find out if there are bigger data plans in your area, check out all available internet plans by typing your zip code below.

You can keep track of how much data you’ve used with a data usage monitor or with the Hughesnet or Viasat apps—both of which include a data usage meter. In order to keep data usage low, you should minimize video streaming since streaming uses so much data. Instead, get satellite TV, a TV antenna, or rent DVDs for home entertainment.

If you’re running out of data each month, you can also upgrade your satellite internet plan so you have more data. Viasat and Hughesnet offer tiered plans ranging from very low data up to moderate amounts. Starlink (which is available in a limited area during the beta phase) offers unlimited data, so if you can get Starlink in your area, you won’t have to worry about rationing out your data every month.

If you’re getting excessive pop-up ads or remarkable slowing in all activities, you could have a computer virus or malware. Viruses and malware most often cause a sharp decline in processing speed rather than a generalized slowness that hasn’t changed much over the years.

You can follow anti-virus steps from Norton or McAfee to get rid of viruses. You can also drop off your laptop to a computer repair place to get it running smoothly (which we’ve done sometimes). Virus removal is tricky. You may lose most of what you have on your computer, which is why it’s always best to have a backup of the hard drive.

If the slowness has been slowly building over months, you might not have a virus or malware—you might just have an overloaded hard drive. If you have too little available memory on your device, it will cause slowing. You can optimize your hard drive yourself. Cookies can also cause internet slowing. To fix this, you can clear your cache in your browser, which could increase your internet speeds.

A booster probably won’t help increase your satellite internet speed. A booster or extender will allow the signal to travel farther away from your modem/router, so it can be helpful if you’re trying to get a weak signal to stretch into the backyard or outbuildings. But a booster won’t make a satellite internet signal any faster.

Making satellite internet faster usually boils down to having enough data. The most common cause for satellite internet slowing is maxing out your data allotment (and then getting your speed throttled). So monitor your data usage and avoid streaming video (which uses between 1–3 GB of data per hour).

There are two other quick things you can do to get the most out of your satellite connection when speed really matters: skip Wi-Fi and connect a single device at a time. The fastest internet connection you can get is with an ethernet cable, when you plug your computer directly into the modem/router. In addition, make sure nobody else in your home is online at the same time. If you’re trying to video call grandma at the same time that somebody is gaming, and someone else is checking social media, that could slow down your connection and make the call fail.

Viasat is one of the only satellite internet companies that offer varying speed tiers, so if slow speed is a consistent problem, you could increase your speed and data cap. If that isn’t an option, make the most of the speed and data you have by not streaming video. Rent DVDs, get a TV antenna, or install satellite TV for your household entertainment instead. Streaming uses a lot of data, and once your data is gone, your satellite internet speeds will drop.

Satellite internet varies in speed from 12 Mbps to a speedy 140 Mbps, but it probably won’t ever reach fiber optic speeds available in urban areas. That said, satellite internet service is faster than dial-up and can be a good way to keep customers connected in rural areas. Satellite internet isn’t the only type of internet service in rural areas, however, so we recommend you check out other options as well. Many types of internet service—like fixed wireless, ADSL, and LTE home internet service—are usually better options if you have them available in your area. Learn more by checking out our guide to the “Best Internet Options for Rural Areas.”