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Last updated: Friday, November 14, 2008

When Debra and Lee Sherbeyn first moved to rural Virginia 14 years ago, they didn’t own a computer, much less fret over access to the Web. It wasn’t long before they had a machine and were logging onto the Internet using a dial-up modem. The arrangement suited them fine until family members started sending pictures by e-mail. It became downright untenable in 2004 when Lee entered the real estate business in their home in Bealeton, Va., about 58 miles southwest of Washington. “You can’t wait all day for a picture of a house to download,” Debra says. Nor can you get a Digital Subscriber Line or cable modem service in their part of Bealeton. So the Sherbeyns settled on a satellite broadband connection from Hughes Communications. At $69 a month, it costs more than comparable services from phone and cable providers, but the Sherbeyns don’t mind. “It’s been totally worth it,” Debra says. While most urban and suburban U.S. households have access to cable modem service from a cable TV company or DSL from a phone carrier — or both — the majority of residents of rural areas have neither. According to a July study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, only 38 percent of rural American households have access to high-speed Internet connections, compared with 60 percent for suburban dwellers. Satellite Solution Cable and telephone companies usually build their networks in areas where the population is dense enough that they can expect a profit on their investment. Those like the Sherbeyns, who live outside cable or phone service areas and eschew dial-up service, often look to satellite. More often than not, they buy it from Hughes, the biggest provider of satellite broadband services, a small but surprisingly healthy sliver of the broadband business. Hughes traces its roots to 1971, when it was…

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Hughes Communications: Boondocks Broadband

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