Satellite Internet is terrible. Not really their fault tho. The problem is that to send a signal directly to a satellite, you need a LOT of power, and that much power is simply not feasible for residential homes to handle. So, instead of beaming a signal back up to the satellite, they have to use another way to do it. Guess what? Dial Up is NOT dead. Usually you dont need very much for an upload speed on any internet connection, but because of the routing and stuff that goes on between both the Satellite and Dial Up Upload / DSL Upload, you end up with a lot of time between the transmitter and receiver. That is really what causes Satellite Internet to be poor.
For example, you ask your roommate in the next room a question and get a response back pretty snappy. That is standard high speed internet. Satellite would be the equivilant of you calling your roommate and asking them a question, but have to wait for a response, to which you get a big giant postal package mailed to you several days later. Thats Satellite Internet.
Satellite Internet isnt purposefully designed to be poor, it is just the fault of the nature of that type of system and what they have to do in order to make it work. You CAN get fast speeds out of Satellite Internet to do things like stream a movie, but you'll notice a ton of lag when you try to pause a streaming movie or video. Thats where the delay comes and and really the only thing about satellite I really cant stand, You can stream videos since downloading on satellite can go extremely quick, comparable to the highest high speed providers, but cant play online games with it to save your life due that lag. I pressed the UP key on my keyboard, then my character moved, then a week later, I got a message back from the game server.
Cable Internet, for those who are lucky enough to have it available in their area, has a distinct advantage in that the way that Data is Sent and Received comes from the same source, making networking routing stuffs all way way way way way faster. DSL is the next step down, but also has massive limitations. There is only so much an actual pair of copper wires can do. Due to the way phone calls also route stuff, there is not really a way to "Transmit" an internet signal across all phone lines at the same time as basically happens with Cable Internet. Next step down is Dial Up. Yes, it is still around because that is what people in very rural areas need for Satellite Internet to work. At the other end of the spectrum, going higher this time is Fiber or Fiber Optic. Optical Internet is sickeningly faster than even Cable Internet by orders of magnitude because you can pulse light beams much faster than you can change the voltage on a copper wire. There is so much less interference (as happens with copper pair through induction) on Optical Internet that you can start hitting Terabytes Per Second. Those are usually Internet Backbones. Nice thing about Optical is when it is upgraded, the Fiber Optic Cable itself does not need to be replaced, just the devices at both ends. That is especially useful since there is fiber optic cable (well, big ass bundles of them) that lay all across the ocean floor all over the place.
Anyway, thats what can be said about Internet Services.
This is one of the biggest discoveries of the XXI first century - Many TV programs are available in HD for free with over the air antenna. To top it all, the quality is better because, unlike cable and satellite, the signal is not compressed.
