Yoel Gat
CEO, Gilat Satellite Networks (left)

Zur Feldman
CEO, Starband Communications

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Broadband was one of the year's biggest letdowns. Though cable and phone companies spent billions trying to meet consumer demand for superfast, always-on connections to the Internet, the market remained vastly underserved. There are still a lot more people who want a fat pipe than can get one.

Who will turn things around? Our money is on Gilat Satellite Networks, an Israeli company that, in a joint venture with Microsoft, will be the first to offer consumer satellite broadband service (competitors are at least a year behind). Gilat's StarBand service, scheduled to debut later this fall, is a two-way wireless link to the Net with download speeds of up to 400 kilobits per second — not quite the 608K-plus rate provided by a cable modem or a digital subscriber line (dsl) but still a huge improvement over a 56K dial-up connection. StarBand will probably cost a little more than the $40 or $50 per month charged by cable operators and telephone companies, but a satellite promises what these other players can't: service to almost anyone, anywhere, across the continental U.S., from the first day of launch. No house calls to check wiring, just a dish on the roof. (A caveat for urbanites: tall buildings could interfere with the signal.)

Gilat founder and CEO Yoel Gat says StarBand will focus first on the few million American homes in sparsely populated areas — places where dial-up access is currently the only option and typically costs 3¢ or 4¢ per minute instead of a flat rate of $20 per month. "If you spend 20 hours online a month," Gat says, "signing up for our service will be a no-brainer."

But in order for Gilat and other satellite providers to make a real dent in the market, they'll have to compete in cable and dsl territory too, says Abraham Gutman, CEO of Emperative, which makes broadband software. They'll have to prove that their service is dependable; that installation isn't the nightmare it has been for many dsl and cable-modem customers; and that services — from interactive gaming to live streaming of concerts and other events — are of high quality. "It's not enough," says Gutman, "for them to be an Internet-service provider on steroids."

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PHOTOGRAPH BY MANUELLO PAGANELLI FOR TIME DIGITAL
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME DIGITAL BY WILLIAM DUKE (inset)

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