One of the big challenges will be the costs involved:

Internet, Grounded

But if anyone knows the costs of trenching fiber optic pipe and building satellite networks, it’s Wyler. After selling his first company, a computer parts outfit called Silent Systems, for $100 million in 1999, he founded Terracom, an Internet service provider in Rwanda that had to build much of its own network infrastructure, including fiber optic pipes and cell towers. After selling that company for $20 million, he started satellite Internet company O3b in 2007.

O3b provides Internet service via mid-Earth orbit satellites. By compromising between low Earth orbit and geosynchonous orbit, the company is able to provide a reasonable 150 millisecond latency without the need for hundreds of satellites. But instead of providing service directly to end users, as SpaceX and WebOne want to do, it sells connectivity to Internet service providers in places like the Cook Islands, which in turn provide their customers with service via cellular networks or fixed line connections.

Wyler, who left O3b last year before working briefly at Google, has some specific ideas to to deal with costs. He told BusinessWeek that instead of having every user buy their own dish, he expects them to be installed in public places like schools and hospitals, which will then provide WiFi connections.

For me the internet seems fine down here minus the occasional outage 🙂  Let’s see what happens with this idea!

thanks to Wired for the great write-up

thanks to Patrick Bombaert for the pic