I am a telecommunication engineer with vast experience in setting up, operation and maintenance of telecommunication facilities like Earth Station - Std A/B, Intelsat BIS, VSAT BIS, INMARSAT... to the latest in telecommunication. Due to limited bandwidth of transponders in satellites the World moved over to optical fiber communication back in late 90s. This field is developing in leaps and bounds and at present the bandwidth offered is a mind boggling 40 - 100 Gigabit/sec on each color of laser (light) compared to 2 Megabit/sec via satellite. Systems are in operation which have transmission rate of 500 Gigabit / sec and going upwards. This is the reason Internet, telephony and data communication have become affordable. In future the prices will come down further....