Satellites have long been a source of fascination for people ever since Sputnik was sent into orbit in 1957. Entrepreneurs and inventors could not help but envision the possible uses for such an intriguing device. Starting in the 1960s, communications companies began putting their own satellites into space, recognizing the potential satellites had enable people to communicate over long distances. No longer did we have to string miles and miles of wire across desserts and mountains; all we had to do was to send a radio signal at the sky, and have it bounce back down in another place. It was quick and incredibly convenient.
These days, we use satellites for many different things, not the least of which is satellite internet service. Satellites are what make the world wide web possible in the first place. By the 19070s there were local networks of computers in various places around the world, but it wasn’t until they started using satellites that it became possible to connect one network of computers with another network in another part of the world. In 1996, DirecPC (which is now known as HughesNet) was the first company to offer individual, consumer satellite internet service to people living in remote areas.
Today, more people are using satellite internet than ever before, and the service itself has become faster than every before. There are satellites trained on almost any part of the world capable of delivering live internet to those living outside the range of cables and wires. A single satellite can handle up to 6,000 signals at one time. The concept is still just as simple, and just as amazing as it was before: send a message from your computer into the sky, get a message back again, relayed over tens of thousands of miles in a half a second.