you're on to something.
Years ago, I had a pal from south that used his Dish to get internet. Coupled with a regular dial up modem for sending out requests to the internet, he was able to download at 400-500k.
Latency was horrible but sustained transfer rates were pretty amazing. That means you can't play any online games but you can download the internet in a few days. lol.
It was not cheap though. Can't remember the exact price but it was expensive no mc.
In more recent times, other dish based internet solutions cropped up. Some allowed you to forgo the dial up modem and gave you two way satellite transfers. DirectTV has it in the form of their DirectWay solution. Starting at US$99.00 you can get 1000 - 1500kbps (that is t1 speeds).
Read more here:
http://www.groundcontrol.com/direcway-dw4020/Opus had one as well. Caridirec, a third. There website isn't working anymore and no one is answering the phone. Not a good sign! lol
Anyway, two way satellite meant you could upload at high speed as well but still suffered the high latency. It is integral to the way satellite works, having to traverse the earths stratosphere and back.
That distance, back and forth, just can't be travelled any faster than 300-400ms it seems.
For comparison, TSTT DSL will easily do sub 90ms ping back to the ISP.
There is another thing to consider with Sat bandwidth. They usually have connection limits and transfer limits. throttling is par for the course.
Long story short, if you can get TSTT DSL, forget about satellite.
You'll be much better off for it.