[gruez]

>Would be useful for emergency text-messaging after a disaster, though.

Disaster is probably the least useful use case for this. The satellite would be overloaded from all the people requesting help. A far more plausible use case is if you got lost hiking or something.

[Scoundreller]

Or multicast down, but probably couldn’t get more than a few kbps without killer expenses.

Outernet was an application of this concept:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othernet

But reality is that cellular coverage world wide gets better and better.