Satellite Internet a lifeline for rural areas

Michael Schuppenhauer, a biotechnology consultant, lives in an idyllic canyon off the Pacific Ocean near Half Moon Bay, California. On the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just 40 minutes away, lies the heartland of the Internet: Google's headquarters and Silicon Valley.

Yet the Internet has passed by Schuppenhauer's ranch. It's too far from the local telephone hub for a digital subscriber line, or DSL. There's no cable. Even cell phones don't work, because of the rugged terrain. He could use dial-up, but that's too slow for much of today's Internet; handling large files such as online video is difficult.

So Schuppenhauer gets broadband Internet service through a coffee-table-sized satellite dish on the side of his house that sends his Google search requests on a 44,600-mile round trip into space.