I have been following this thread with some interest. A few months ago a friend of mine from Fore Systems told me about the 'ACTS' project. NASA and Ohio-State and quite a few others were doing research into the Gigabit Satelite Network. There was a test between Sony in Japan and I 'BELIEVE' JPL in Pasadena of hight def video transmissions over an OC-3 circuit. I heard something about a quasi commercial deployment of another ACTS project. Anybody heard anything about this? If enough birds like ACTS were sent up, this could be a boon for ISP's maybe. Of course I live in this ideal world where everybody is reasonable, intelligent, and well yea I know things are just quite the opposite.
Which type of satellite network was talked about? If we're talking the big, far-away GEO satellites, my guess is that the latency involved would kill such a project. OTOH, LEO satellites could work (see: Teledesic), but involve a massive investment and lots of satellites. - Jakob