Meaning literally "Very Small Aperture Terminal", the term refers to any fixed satellite terminal that is used to provide interactive or receive-only communications.

VSATs are used for a wide variety of telecommunications applications, including corporate networks, rural telecoms, distance learning, telemedicine, disaster recovery, ship-board communications, transportable "fly-away" systems, and much more.

VSATs are becoming increasingly popular, because they are a single, flexible communications platform that can be installed quickly and cost effectively to provide telecoms solutions for consumers, governments and corporations.

They have been in use for more than 10 years and, with more than 500,000 systems operating in more than 120 countries, VSATs are a mature and proven technology.