In order to provide global Access to the world of information, the satellite communications play a key rolo, making possible the Access of broadband services to areas where the terrestrial infrastructure doesn´t allow. This work shows a characterization of the potencials applications to the satellite ATM networks, making a description of the problems and limitations that need to be overcome, as well as the solutions that have been suggested. Among thesse problems, we have the development of multiple access protocols that allow an efficient utilization of space segment and, at same time, guarantee the quality of service. The traditionals multiples access protocols are not well suitable to multiple service networks, as we hope in a broadband environment, since they were created to networks with a specific application. So, it´s necessary to make an adaptation in these conventionals technics to this new reality, because through efficients multiple access protocols, will be possible to have considerable gains in space segment`s resources, more and more rare and, consequantly, expensive. To verify in more details this problem, we describe three protocols suggested to provide multiple access in satellite ATM networks, all of them based on the technic of time division multiple access (TDMA). The performance analysis of these protocols is done, through simulations, confronting the advantages and disadvantages of each one.