Then down to a rooftop satellite dish in this creek-side settlement in the cottonwoods, home to 500 people on the red dirt of the canyon floor. It aims to sell service on less remote ground, in suburban and semirural areas that sit beyond major population centers. If you can see the southern sky, we can put in a terminal. Hughes plans to introduce a competing service later this year. Though wires on the ground are not foolproof conduits for the high-speed Internet either, satellite systems entail tricky technical problems.
Lightning can impede transmission and wind can blow the dishes out of alignment.
Two of the dishes in Supai, for example, were recently put out of order for this reason. Not least, StarBand must confront fundamental questions about the role of space in the communications universe and the economics of satellite technology. Once viewed as an elegant means to transcend basic geographic limits, some consumer satellite services have more recently gained infamy for the great expense it takes to deploy them before the revenue can start to roll in. But if these challenges can be navigated, analysts say StarBand could gain rapid success for the simple reason that great stretches of the map are now devoid of links to the high-speed Internet. Cable television systems upgraded for two-way Internet traffic are the leading route, but they don't go everywhere.