There are several ways to use a cell phone as a connection to the internet for a laptop. The first way is referred to as "tethering". This usually involves connecting a cable from the USB port of the laptop to the cell phone and then using the cellphone as a modem to dial-in to your provider.
Another way is that the phone can be used as a WiFi "Hotspot". I know Android phones like my Droid X on the Verizon network can do this. The phone will allow up to 5 devices to connect and share it's internet connection. On Verizon, this is an extra $20/month feature and there is a data limit of 2G per month.
The method I currently use with my Droid X phone is to connect a cable to my laptop and use an app on the phone called PDANet that allows the laptop to use the phone's 3G connection to access the internet. This doesn't cost any additional but recently apps like PDANet were removed from the Android Market because the cell carriers don't want you to use them.
There is a device available from the cell carriers that is referred to as an "aircard" which is essentially a cell phone with no mouth or ear piece. It plugs in to a USB port on your laptop and will allow that laptop to connect to the internet. You can also get a broadband router that allows you to plug the aircard into it and it then it can share the connection with multiple other computers.
There is also a device called a "MiFi" which is a combination of an aircard and a router. This device allows you to connect to the internet and share with 5 devices.
Depending on which cellphone carrier you have the different connection methods have different costs. Performance is dependent on which cell carrier you have and how strong their signal is where you are at the time.
I'm not aware of any satellite USB cards, if they exist, they are most likely very expensive.
