The initial heavenly body dedicated to delivering broadband services to Europe has launched on an Ariane 5 rocket.
The Hylas booster is written to expand supposed "notspots" - remote locations such as farming villages where it is now not probable to obtain a swift internet connection.
Lift-off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana occurred at 1539 local time (1839 GMT).
The heavenly body was successfully placed in circuit 34 mins later.
A vigilance from Hylas was picked up roughly right away at an receiver sited in India.
Controllers will now take a number of weeks to location the booster accurately in the sky a few 36,000km on top of the equator, and to examine out onboard systems.
Hylas (Highly Adaptable Satellite) is a blurb project operated by start-up Avanti Communications of London, but the booster itself incorporates technology created with open appropriation by the European Space Agency (Esa).
"It is a sincerely tiny booster but rsther than capable," Esa's Hylas project executive Andrea Cotellessa told BBC News.
"The cargo has adaptableness to reallocate bandwidth and power in any of the 8 mark beams that casing key marketplace areas choosen by Avanti.
"Normally, satellites have this magnitude outline prearranged at the pattern theatre and it can't be altered in orbit.
"On Hylas, this may be completed at any short time in time from the manage centre. This lively is critical since it will enable Avanti to keep up with marketplace evolution."
Hylas was ready at the Portsmouth, UK, assembly lines of EADS Astrium, Europe's largest space company, and in Bangalore by Antrix, a blurb arm of the Indian space group (Isro).
The 2.6-tonne booster will run in the Ka air wave rope and broach broadband services to a few 350,000 subscribers.
The UK supervision put 40m in to the Hylas growth programme.
It has a undertaking that everybody in Britain should have access to a decent net connection by 2015.That means a minimum of two megabits per second (Mbps).
Some 3 million UK homes now drop next this standard; and opposite Europe, there are many millions more who cannot now obtain an competent connection by terrestrial technology.
Hylas will be gift up to 10Mbps to its users.
"Now that we've got this heavenly body access, we'll be able to obtain swift broadband is to initial time [in notspots]," the British Science Minister David Willetts said.
"There'll be farmers, hotels, houses in the Lake District, in Scotland and tools of Cornwall that haven't been able to obtain broadband before; but now this heavenly body will broach it. That brings them all online and that's something the merger supervision is unequivocally committed to," he told BBC News.
Avanti CEO David Williams mentioned the firm had large skeleton is to future.
"Hylas-1 is the initial of what will be many satellites," he explained. "We've already got our second heavenly body beneath building at the short time and that launches in about 15 months' time.
"That will put more ability in to the UK but moreover it puts new ability in to new areas in Africa and the Middle East. And then you are formulation more satellites for Latin America, India and other tools of Asia."
In Europe, Avanti faces contest from the long-established Eutelsat space communications company, that is putting up its own net-dedicated Ka-band satellite, delivering 10Mbps by its Tooway service.
Eutelsat's KA-Sat is due for launch on a Russian Proton space station on 20 December.
Astrium worked on both Hylas-1 and KA-Sat, and at one theatre the two satellites were sitting inside the same Portsmouth cleanroom distant by a few metres.
SES, Europe's other leading player in the prearranged heavenly body services market, has so far resisted commissioning a KA-band net-dedicated spacecraft. Instead, it has chosen to offer a few broadband capability by its navy of TV-dedicated platforms.
The expectancy is that all this wake up will help expostulate down the cost of what has traditionally been an costly way to roller the web.
Friday's Ariane flight moreover orbited a telecommunications booster for Intelsat. The US platform will broach a far-reaching operation of services opposite Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Asia.
Intelsat-17 was ejected by the Ariane upperstage only before Hylas, 27 mins in to the flight.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
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