Satellite broadband is a fairly new way of connecting to the Internet and is used by those people living in very remote areas who are unable to access cable or ADSL broadband. This service is available throughout the UK and North America, although there will be some areas which are not covered by satellite broadband, or where the signal is very weak and ineffective. You will need to install a special dish to enable you to use satellite broadband (a regular satellite television dish cannot pick up web data streaming), and there are two main types of satellite Internet broadband:
· One Way Connections – this will enable you to receive data such as webpages, but you will not be able to send data (such as emails) unless you also have a dial up Internet connection through a regular phone line.
· Two Way Services – this type of satellite broadband will allow you to both send and receive data through your dish but can be quite expensive in terms of buying the equipment, installation and also monthly subscriptions.

How Does Satellite Broadband work?
The Internet data feed is beamed out directly from the ISP’s satellite host, which is then picked up by the special dish installed on your property. Two different speeds can currently be delivered to your dish, 2 mbps per second downstream and 1 mbps upstream. This is considerably faster than dial up services which manage around 53 kilobits per second, but the beamed data feed does have to travel up and down from the geostationary orbit of the satellite (a round trip of as much as143,553 km ), so there is an unavoidable delay in satellite broadband which can make it unsuitable for ‘real time’ online use such as gaming and watching videos and films.

This means that while satellite broadband is faster than dial up it is still slower than the other broadband options available (cable and DSL). Another key disadvantage of satellite broadband is that it can be affected by atmospheric influences, such as bad weather, and this can mean you will not be able to use your satellite broadband at all in certain conditions.