Viasat Satellite Internet in Illinois

Viasat provides satellite internet service across Illinois using its advanced ViaSat-2 and ViaSat-3 satellite constellation. Unlike cable or fiber providers that require physical infrastructure running to each home, Viasat beams internet directly from orbit to a small dish installed on your roof. This makes it available virtually everywhere in Illinois, from the flat prairies and farmland stretching south from the Chicago metropolitan area. Downstate Illinois, far from Chicago's broadband-rich environment, faces rural connectivity challenges similar to neighboring Iowa and Missouri, and Viasat fills that critical gap by delivering broadband speeds without needing a single mile of cable or fiber.

Viasat has invested heavily in its next-generation satellite fleet, with the ViaSat-3 constellation delivering significantly more capacity than previous generations. For Illinois residents, this means faster speeds and more consistent performance, particularly with the new Unleashed plan lineup. These contract-free plans offer unlimited data, a major shift from Viasat's earlier offerings that had priority data thresholds. Illinois has one of the starkest urban-rural broadband divides in the Midwest, with Chicago ranking among the best-connected cities while downstate towns struggle, which makes Viasat's expanding capacity especially impactful here.

Chicagoland residents enjoy fiber from multiple providers, but satellite remains essential for the farming communities of central and southern Illinois. With speeds up to 300 Mbps on the Unleashed 300+ plan and no data caps to worry about, Viasat has evolved from a last-resort option into a genuinely competitive broadband choice for rural Illinois households. The company's shift toward unlimited data and faster speeds reflects growing demand from remote workers, telehealth patients, and streaming households in southern Illinois communities near Carbondale, the rural Quad Cities outskirts, and central Illinois farming towns.