ViaSat is hoping to leave the rest of the satellite broadband universe in the dust with Exede, a new satellite broadband service that the Carlsbad, Calif., satellite communications company claims will be as good as or better than the average optical fiber connection on the ground.

ViaSat plans to offer the service to about a million subscribers across the United States and Canada.

Subscribers will be able to download at speeds of 12 megabits per second and upload at 3 Mb/s.

Latency is still an issue, of course.