[lorenzhs]

Latency and bandwidth are two separate things, and the distance to an LTE tower has approximately nothing to do with latency to the server you’re connecting to, which btw is likely much further away than 100 miles. Now factor in that light moves 50% faster in air or vacuum than it does in fibre optic cables. The satellites are also going to be at a height of around 1000km (600 miles). But I t takes light only about 3.3ms to travel that distance. 30ms latency end-to-end should be realistically achievable this way. That’s more than a good residential connection but good enough for just about any application other than latency-sensitive multiplayer games.

There’s valid skepticism of SpaceX’s plan, but none of your points are among it.

[mozumder]

This is a discussion about low bandwidth. Why are you talking about latency?

[Robotbeat]

Because otherwise your comment makes no sense. You can already get satellite data rates (100Mbps on a home plan) equal to or greater than LTE, from ~100 times further (36,000 km altitude Geosynchronous orbit) and the distance itself does not fundamentally limit the speed, but the latency there is terrible and is fundamentally limited. LEO satellite constellations address that.

SpaceX's particularly large constellation (allowing streaming from multiple satellites at a time and with large phased array antennae on both ends) will allow much higher bandwidth than existing satellite internet systems, but the biggest deal about these LEO satellite constellations over GSO satellites is the far lower latency.