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It depends on the satellite system in question. The Inmarsat service MH370 was using has good coverage on the Indian ocean. Other services do have spotty coverage, but it's not some big dead zone. It's a shame Iridium is so damn expensive, because this would be a great use case for it. You could easily cram a position report into a SMS message and send it via Iridium every few minutes, and the Iridium antennas are small and low power so they don't impact the aircraft much.

Yes - those numbers were for satellite data, but I forgot to reference it (and where I got it). However, I found some costs here - 25GB for $77,826 ($3.11 per MB) - keep in mind they're prepaid, so an airline will get lower costs.

First, I have no affiliation with these people, but they sell worldwide and actually show pricing for real VSAT, not crappy HughesNet, Viasat, Starband, etc: http://www.groundcontrol.com/

Second, almost all satellite internet is from GEO orbit, as everyone has said, with massive latency; reducing contention is done with spot beams, but the catch is that, if you're not in the spot beam, you're out of luck: this is especially true of the new Ka-band services (Viasat-1, Gen-4 Hughesnet, and probably more coming). And since ALL of these are on Ku or Ka band, unless you can afford a big dish, you can expect rain fade much of the time.

Third, up until recently we had a Ku-band Hughesnet connection here at work for our extranet. It sucked. BIG TIME. I have to echo what everyone else says: do not get satellite internet unless you have NO OTHER CHOICE!

Last, there are the slow-speed alternatives: Inmarsat is also in GEO, but much slower and more expensive; in exchange, you get portability (no dish, just one of those suitcase antennas). Then there's Iridium (2400 bps) and Global(aka Local)Star (9600 bps--no kilo!), which are only useful for e-mail without attachments or text browsing with Lynx (and even then it'll be slow): these are in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), but at these speeds from the 1980's, you won't notice the latency gain. :(

Hope this helps, Mike

Actually, it's more like 1.5s. (based on a BGAN system in my driveway. 1.2s from the walmart parking lot -- wide open sky) It's the most expensive internet I know of, but it works f'ing everywhere. (Antarctica not included.)

You are right that you can not take a Direcway or HughesNet satellite dish and set it up on your own, but Ground Control and other companies make mobile satellite solutions that will locate the satellite and do all of the setup without your help. They even have an in motion solution. If you are going to be remote, this is the only real solution but it is pretty expensive. There is lag, but the connection is fast when it is constant. I would combine this and 3g from ATT and 3g from Verizon. I would include Verizon because I have found that ATT does not work too well in remote places of the pacific north west like Montana, but it really depends on where you are going.

Mobile Satellite Internet might be an option depending on the coverage and finding a place on-board with a view of the sky. Heck, they even have suitcase models.

For a lot of folks - and not all of them seniors - the RV or the boat is where you live, it is where you work. Mobile Internet Satellite. Magellan Ground Control

Then there are the purists who would claim that line-of-sight to a tower is not really camping.

Here is an example of an off-the-shelf broadband solution for emergency services, a commercial trucker or the ultimate RV: Magellan Ground Control Priced from $4500-$6600 US. The dish deploys and sets up in about five minutes. Instant Hotspot. But you must be parked. Coverage extends deep into northern Canada, Alaska and northern Mexico.

Ground Control offers a mobile solution for Direcway.

I use to do the more advanced stuff for the Direcways and Starband. I'd recommend Dway all the way. Also, I'd recommend the DW4020: its setup especially for multi-user environments, more bandwidth, bigger dish for rain fade prevention, and a higher FAP limit. FAP is fair access policy in which they throttle your bandwidth down to a 56k if you download to much of a given amount in a given time. The equipment will cost about $1200 and another $300 to install. The DW600, made for a residense, costs $400 for equipment and $125 for installation. At least, thats what it goes for with no markup. If you could get a sponsor from a dealer, youd be allright. Also be sure to check out www.groundcontrol.com for a more mobile or temp usage. They even have rentals available with automatic geosyncronization so you don't need a fcc licensed individual to set it up. They will even deliver. Definatly go with the DW4020 though. It will be more dependable. You might also want to consider two of them. We recently wired a local courthouse with 2 of those and no problems reported yet.