I wondered the same thing at the time it had to have been ungodly expensive unless it was a stolen device. I can’t remember for sure if it was intelsat or one of the other companies that was around at the time but it was a sat connection. I was also running that webserver on a really bad dsl line. I lived right next door to the phone company CO but was at the end of the line. I had to go with an independent isp because the phone company said it was too far and wouldn’t work. It did work but was super unreliable.
It’s complete shit right now. 5 or more years ago I could quickly find an answer to a very technical question with no problem. Now it is useless for anything. Just today I was looking for a shop near me that can perform a front end alignment on my RV, I searched for “Tractor Trailer front end alignment near me”. The entire first page is either tire shops that do not offer front end alignments, car tire shops that don’t even sell the correct size tires I would need for a tractor trailer, or shops 2000 miles away in various directions. It’s horrible and I think it would be faster to look in the yellow pages for what I need in this case. I never found a shop using google.
Also today I was searching for the tires I need in the shopping tab there were ads for tires that google had labeled as wal-mart but when I would click the link it would take me to a Chinese scam site.