A very different kind of dish network

Slow and expensive options for connecting to the Internet may seem like an inevitable downside to country living, but rural Americans are in for a pleasant surprise. Cheap bits, delivered by satellite, are about to flood rural North America. A new satellite, now sitting atop a rocket in Kazakhstan and set for launch Oct 19, will allow over one million Americans and Canadians to get downloads at a whopping 12 megabits per second, according to WildBlue, which will sell the service starting early next year. That's roughly 10 times the speed of today's typical satellite service and twice as fast as the average American connection.