[gamblor956]

something that was out of reach of common affordability before Starlink.

True, but Starlink isn't what made phased array antennas affordable. The affordability of phased array antennas is what made Starlink financially feasible.

When the Iridium constellations were launched in the 1990s, the commercial phased array antennas in use today had not yet been invented. When the second-generation satellites were designed in the 2010s, phase array antennas were not yet commercially available, and did not become commercially available until around the same time that the 2nd-gen satellites were launched.

[inemesitaffia]

There's no phased array antennas anywhere near even today.

SpaceX was willing to sink over 3 billion into phased array r&d to make it happen.

Also tech from Broadcom and ST Micro

[xondono]

> There's no phased array antennas anywhere near even today.

Wait what? Where's your source for that? Because phased array antennas were used on lots of 4G networks and are one of the cornerstones of 5G.

There where some PAA in deployment when I was in college almost two decades ago.