Most satellite-y things don’t and Starlink’s direct to cell won’t either.
Hence why the spectrum should be pretty cheap (along with its incredible susceptibility to obstructions… which is less of an issue when you’re going roughly “up” without pesky considerations like curvature of the earth)
And you do get a ton of gain with a small antenna at those high frequencies.
Me too, but at slower data rates. At 550km above, that’s still a big signal loss by inverse square law. Problem with slow data rates is that they clog up the channels.
Phased arrays work without having to repoint, but they don't overcome lack of incidence (insolation?)
(e.g. we can't build a solar panel that works perpendicular to the sun (or nearly perpendicular) using phased array technology because there just isn't much solar radiation hitting the "dish" in the first place)
