In reply to 'Hilda':
I've used it for a couple of years down in the French Alps.
Its expensive. The main thing to remember is that although it is very fast in terms of top line speed, the latency is quite high. So clicking on a link you'll expect a long response (a few seconds) but when you get the response, the page or video or whatever downloads extremely quickly.
However this means that a lot of modern web pages that rely on AJAX loading in the background like Facebook and Twitter, can be quite cumbersome to use.
We bought it because the ADSL isn't great in our village and we work from home. However the ADSL has improved so we only keep it as a backup. We've had maybe four or five storms in the last 18 months that have knocked out the phone lines anything from a couple of hours to a couple of days.
To be honest, once the contract is over in a couple of months I'm probably going to cancel the contract and flog the equipment.
I bought the kit through Bentley Walker, and its a Tooway system. I installed it myself, its quite simple if you can do a bit of DIY and are happy to tinker for half a day. BW are OK, their payment system is a bit antiquated but their support is helpful and friendly. If you use them PM me and you might get a discount if I refer you.
The key thing to remember is that you (obviously) need line of sight with the satellite, so check this first. We've got a huge mountain close by and if we were 50 metres closer we wouldn't be able to use it.
The dish is very big and heavy. We're not talking a Sky dish here. Its like some kind of ex-Soviet military hardware.
You'll need to check the footprint band as different locations use different ones - you might need a bigger dish being so far north but I don't know.
You will get a dedicated satellite modem with an ethernet port, so you can either wire a computer directly, or more likely you'll want to then attach a wireless router to connect everything else. Its not the same as the combined ADSL modem/routers you might be used to.
On balance, it works if you need it and have no other options. Might be worth double checking with the locals to see how bad the connection really is for ADSL. Also I think there might a grant you can get if its your only option (in the UK) as part of the government plans to get everybody wired.