There is nothing new about connecting to the Internet via satellite. People do it on airplanes, at sea and in remote corners of the world. ViaSat, a Carlsbad, California, satellite company, beams satellite Internet to 700,000 homes and apartments in the United States. But this is done with bigger, higher-orbiting satellites that sit in a geosynchronous orbit, meaning they move at the same speed as the earth and so stay above a fixed point.