In March, Hughes Network Systems launched an upgrade of its satellite-based Internet service, HughesNet, that transformed it into the first residential satellite-based Internet service to meet the Federal Communications Commission's definition of "broadband." Now, the company is planning for its next major leap in bandwidth—a 100 Mbps-capable network based on a new satellite to be launched in 2021.

HughesNet Gen5, which by June was serving more than 100,000 Internet service customers, provides 25 megabit-per-second (Mbps) download speeds and 3 Mbps upload speeds via the EchoStar 18/Jupiter 1 and EchoStar 19/Jupiter 2 satellites. HughesNet has a 60-percent share of satellite-based residential Internet service in the US and targets the service at rural residential customers underserved by terrestrial cable and telecommunications providers.

Hughes executives announced last week that the company had signed a contract with Space Systems Loral to build the next EchoStar/Jupiter satellite. Designated as EchoStar XXIV/JUPITER 3, the Ultra High Density Satellite (UHDS) will provide residential Internet as well as commercial data services, including in-flight Internet and cellular network "backhaul" for remote cellular towers. EchoStar 24, when added to the existing fleet of satellites, will more than double Hughes' available Ka-band satellite service across both North and South America. The satellite will have 500 gigabits per second of throughput.

HughesNet will likely not be the first to the 100Mbps punch. In 2016, ViaSat executives announced plans for the ViaSat-3 class of data communications satellites, each of which will have a network capacity of 1 terabit per second—roughly the total capacity of the "approximately 400 commercial communications satellites in space today—combined," a company spokesperson for ViaSat said when the satellites were announced in February 2016.

In addition to providing 100Mbps Internet service, ViaSat-3 will also provide up to 1Gbps speeds for maritime applications, including offshore oil and gas platforms, as well as streaming movies and Internet for ViaSat's aviation customers. ViaSat's first two satellites, which are slated for delivery in 2019, will provide service for the Americas as well as Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; a third satellite will follow to provide service for Asia.

While these services will offer a boatload of download bandwidth for customers who currently can't get anything resembling fiber or cable Internet speeds, they won't break the laws of physics. As the satellites are slotted for geostationary orbits, they'll add a round-trip of 240 milliseconds to the journey of every packet sent, plus whatever latency is added by the ground stations connecting them to the Internet. That may be barely perceptible in a Skype conversation, but any Call of Duty player can tell you how much a quarter of a second of lag can mean. Other companies, including OneWeb and SpaceX, are planning lower-latency services based on fleets of low-orbit satellites.