Chinese Geostationary Satellite Reaches Speed of 1Gbps
Method increases chance of usable signals by nearly 20 percent
WASHINGTON, June 26, 2025 – Chinese researchers claimed they developed a new method that dramatically improves satellite internet speeds, according to a story published by the South China Morning Post.
Based in Hong Kong, the SCMP has been operating since 1903 and is Hong Kong's newspaper of record.
It reported that a team of Chinese researchers, led by Professor Jian Wu from Peking University of Posts and Telecommunications and Liu Chao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, claimed that they achieved speeds of one Gigabit per second from a satellite orbiting 22,807 miles above the Earth’s surface using a two-watt laser and a novel technique combining adaptive optics with mode diversity reception.
If true, these speeds would dwarf those provided by Starlink, the largest low-earth orbit satellite internet provider. What makes these speeds even more remarkable is that they came from a satellite in a geostationary orbit, which orbits over 60 times further from the Earth than a typical Starlink satellite.
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Moreover, the reliability of the signal reportedly improved dramatically, from a 72 percent chance of getting a usable signal to a 91.1 percent of getting one.
Traditionally, both AO and MDR have been used to improve signal strength from satellites. AO works by sharpening distorted light, while MDR captures signals that have been scattered. By combining the two methods and employing a multi-plane converter that used a “path-picking” algorithm to pick and merge the strongest signals together, researchers were able to dramatically boost performance from poor signals.
“This method effectively prevents communication quality degradation caused by extremely low signal power,” Wu and Liu’s team wrote.
Though this method is still in the experimental stage, the team’s findings may pose a significant risk to Starlink and other LEO providers.
Though LEO has received high praise, and Starlink has grown rapidly, it has traditionally been able to outperform GEO constellations with both faster speeds and lower latency.
If it loses that edge it may be at serious risk from the GEO industry, given that a single GEO satellite can cover a much larger portion of the Earth than a single LEO can.
