SpaceX Gets FCC Approval to Sell Wireless High-Speed Home Internet from Space
Every story about SpaceX satellite Internet (Starlink) is plagued by questions about high latency.  I think Elon needs to plan on spending a lot of marketing money to overcome this specific misconception.<p>Starlink latency is quite good.  LEO is a lot closer than GEO (less than ~1000 km* vs 35786 km.)  SpaceX actually intends to compete with terrestrial systems on latency; many important routes will have significantly lower latency than any feasible terrestrial system.<p>Remember, fiber isn't latency free.  It isn't even speed of light.  It's about 70% SOL.  Radio, on the other hand, is SOL (or so close it doesn't matter.)  So there is a cross over point where the latency of a LEO satellite system is actually superior despite the uplink/downlink path.<p>*depending on which orbital "shell" is involved.  figures range from 340 km to 1200 km.