That's what I probably misunderstand about the technology - I don't understand how you can have lower latency than current WISP-based infrastructure (are they making these claims against ground-based infrastructure?) when there's satellite internet connections that fade out when a cloud goes by... Also, I would assume they'd have massive capacity issues if they're planning on over-subscribing (they'd have to if they want to sustain a viable profit model, unless they're surviving on government funding?)
They're claiming lower latency than existing satellites due to lower altitude orbits and are using more satellites to compensate for the decreased coverage from each satellite.
Presumably this setup would also help with the cloud coverage issue due to the shorter travel distance and higher likelihood of redundant satellites to connect to.
To be more precise, some of the lowest flying Starlink satellites will be at 340km, which is very low — lower than the ISS, even. By contrast, traditional internet satellites orbit at ~35,700km.
The speed of light in a vacuum is about 50% faster than the speed of light in glass.
But that requires the inter-satellite links be viable, which they aren't yet: the required lasers would survive reentry and they want the satellites to burn up completely on de-orbit so current versions of the satellites don't have them.
And yes, there are significant capacity limitations. Only the truly rural will get good data rates.
Their competition are geostationary satellites that have high latency due to speed of light delays.
In theory a LEO satellite network could also beat transoceanic fiber connections since the high refractive index causes the speed of light in fiber to be only ~2/3rds the vacuum speed of light. But that would require satellite-to-satellite optical links which the first generation of starlink doesn't have.
> Their competition are geostationary satellites that have high latency due to speed of light delays.
Actually it is due to their distances.
Speed of light delays is something that exists everywhere, like fiber internet. In fact, speed of light is faster in space than it is in optical fiber. The problem is distance.
'Actually it is due to speed of light delays. Distance is something that exists everywhere.'
Your weird pedantic distinction doesn't make a difference. They're synonyms in this context. Obviously the difference is how much you have, everyone knows that.