[SamReidHughes]

Having more satellites lets you communicate in a straighter line. Lower altitude lets you hug the Earth more closely. Higher altitude lets you see more neighbors. I'd wager the low altitude satellites are for last mile communication moreso than global linkage. I mean, otherwise they'd have no use for the higher altitude ones? An optimal low latency link around the planet would mostly alternate low-high-low-high-low in sequence, if there aren't enough low altitude nodes to use them exclusively. But maybe you could crush this argument by doing the actual math in this case.