AbstractThe scope of this paper is to present the status and the preliminary results of the research activities that Telespazio is carrying out with the aim at identifying the role of the VSAT systems in the advanced telecommunications services, which will be dominant in the second half of nineties and beyond. The first part of the paper is devoted to an overview of the evolution trend of the terrestrial networks. The main body of the paper presents the results of our investigations on the application of VSAT systems in two fields: broadband networks and intelligent networks. Background information has been intentionally added for the easier comprehension of the topics presented in the paper. A list of acronyms appears as an Appendix.