[Reason077]

> ”Each satellite only has 20gbit/sec per beam of capacity. It's likely even in small cities that will not be enough”

But you're not going to have just one satellite per city. Consider that Starlink already has approval for 12,000 satellites. And has applied for 30,000 more! At 20 Gbps each, that’s a lot of bandwidth.

When fully built out, any given point on the ground should have coverage from dozens (hundreds?) of satellites at any given time, spreading the load in regions of heavy demand.

[dx034]

But they have to move. Having 100 satellites serving NYC means you'd need a similarly fine mesh over the ocean.

I think they'll just make it more expensive than internet in cities. That way it's still the best option for rural areas without attracting too many customers in cities.

[Reason077]

Exactly. And in a dense city like NYC, many customers wouldn't have a clear line of sight to the sky anyway. You could install communal antennas/receivers on building roofs, but at that point you might as well just pay for fibre or terrestrial mobile broadband.

There may be niche customers in cities (data redundancy/resiliency etc), but in general, the biggest advantage will be for rural/remote customers who currently pay above the odds for substandard service.