Today, there are literally hundreds of commercial satellites in operation around the world. These satellites are used for such diverse purposes as wide-area network communication, weather forecasting, television broadcasting, amateur radio communications, Internet access, and the Global Positioning System. The first man-made satellite, which was about the size of a basketball, was launched by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. It did nothing but repeatedly transmit a simple Morse code signal back to earth. Since that time, satellites have become much more powerful.
Most communication satellites in use today are geostationary.
They orbit the earth directly over the equator, approximately 22,000 miles up. With this immense capacity, today's communication satellites are an ideal medium for transmitting and receiving almost any kind of content, from simple data to the most complex and bandwidth-intensive video, audio and data content. The second component of VSAT earth station is the indoor unit. The indoor unit is connected to the outdoor unit with a pair of cables. The advantage of a VSAT earth station, versus a typical terrestrial network connection, is that VSATs are not limited by the reach of buried cable.