SpaceX sends laser-linked Starlinks to the polar orbit
Since the linked article is somewhat ambiguous about this, and other commenters appear to be getting confused about the purpose and value of the laser links as well: these laser links are purely intended for satellite-to-satellite communications for Starlink.  They are not (at least at this time, and for the foreseeable future) intended for ground-to-satellite communications.<p>The value that sat-to-sat laser links provide is that they create a low latency, high bandwidth path that stays within the Starlink satellite network.  Before these 10 satellites, each Starlink satellite has only been capable of communicating directly to ground terminals (either consumer, transit, or SpaceX control).  For traffic that is intended to move large geographic distances (think transcontinental), this can require several hops back and forth between ground and space, or the traffic from the user terminal is exited at a node that is geared for transiting traffic and most of the data transits along existing ground Internet links.<p>By performing this type of transit directly in space, and exiting at a transit node nearest the destination for the data, you greatly reduce latency.  Bandwidth still might not be great, but what this does is unlocks a very financially lucrative consumer use case: low latency finance traffic and critical communications.  There are many use cases around the world where shaving even 10-20 milliseconds of latency on a data path can unlock finance and emergency capabilities, and this is a long fought battle throughout the history of these industries.  As an example, if you got a piece of news about a company in Australia, and wanted to trade on it as quickly as possible in USA, if you can beat your competitors by 10-20 milliseconds, that can mean a lot of money.<p>Laser comms for Starlink sats have long been planned, but have historically proven to be quite hard to get working.  They also depend on a sufficient critical mass of satellites so that a given sat actually does have another sat within lock to send the traffic towards.