Satellite Internet

The two main Satellite Internet access providers in the U.S. are DirecWay and Starband. StarBand is the first company to provide high-speed Internet services to Residential and Small Business customers in all 50 U.S. States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The mission of the company is to provide affordable high-speed Internet service to those not served by other means such as DSL or cable modem broadband.

Meanwhile, DirecWay is a part of DirecTV Group, which itself is a unit of Fox Entertainment Group, part of News Corporation Limited.

The DirecWay high-speed Internet service is available to consumers anywhere in the contiguous United States.

According to ISP-Planet, Hughes DirecWay had more than 260,000 subscribers by late 2005, while Starband had more than 32,000 according to company sources.

Subscribing to Satellite Internet

For many, the first place to go for a Internet access by satellite is to go directly to the providers' web sites, located at www.starband.com and www.direcway.com.

Both these sites have online stores and further information on system requirements and other FAQs.

For Europe, you can find access services from such providers as europeonline.com. Also, ses-astra.com lists resellers of Internet through their satellites to include:

nsab-sirius.com (Sweden, Norway, Finland)
www.dslbycall.net (Germany)
www.t-com.de (Germany)
www.filiago.com (UK and many other countries, including Spain and Italy)
www.bysky.nl (Netherlands, Belgium)
www.netsystem.com (Italy)

Similar lists are available from other satellite service providers.