Much faster, since the satellites would be in low earth orbit, a hundred times closer than geosynchronous. It would provide internet at 5g speeds. Coverage would be global, capacity would be limited by the number of satellites they put up there.
What’s neat about this is that they could provide access all over the world-- like China-- and bypass national filters like the Great Firewall.
Yeah, except where’s the money coming from? China isn’t going to let its citizens pay for an unfiltered internet, and there’s no organization that can cover the vast costs of such a system just for philanthropy.
Not to mention it would greatly inflate costs if customers in the rest of the world were subsidizing coverage for entirely other parts of the world.
Beyond that, you also need a fairly sophisticated ground station to hook into Starlink, at least as currently conceived—a phased array antenna to do beam-steering to track a moving satellite overhead. That’s a conspicuous and easily-controlled piece of equipment.
I have a NatGeo from a few years back that covered all of these companies competing for the (then-active) Google X-Prize. These folks were one of the groups that were described. Nice to see they made it this far.
This is an amazing video that NASA put together about the recent Ultima Thule flyby on Jan 1. Take the time to enjoy this one if you’ve got a few hours to kill.
