Most satellite internet services rely on single geostationary satellites that orbit the Earth at 35,786 km. This means that the data takes a long time to travel between the user and satellite —this is called latency — and it makes streaming, video calls or other high data rate activities very difficult.

Starlink and OneWeb are different. They operate by launching thousands of satellites that are much closer to Earth, at about 550km, covering the whole globe. Because their satellites are in a low orbit, thus latency is much lower at around 25 ms vs 600+ ms.