[sawyers]

Agreed. Land coverage from space is going to have a larger line of site.

I'm wondering more about unit economics. 10k units for global coverage with ongoing maintenance cost. Or earth bound construction that costs significantly less than a rocket launch.

You could realistically prefab and ship microwave links or base stations. It would be extremely cheap compared to space.

What I'm thinking though is that there's no real estate in space. So you don't have to do any surveying, leasing, etc. You just launch a rocket. Which means if you fund anything in space, you can grow it to scale as long as you have the capital.