Salvatore De Dominicis (no.delete@this.thanks.com) on November 26, 2020 8:15 am wrote:
> IIRC one of the design goals of Starlink was to be able to connect London to New York with lower latency
> than optic fiber, using the fact that the speed of light in fiber is lower than air/vacuum
>
Yes, but that requires the in orbit laser routing which the current satellites don't have (except for, iirc, 2 that are specifically just for testing the laser signalling atm). The eventual goal will be for the in orbit satellites to connect via a laser based mesh network which will allow in orbit routing and remove the local downlink requirement. They'll still be dependent for most service on local down link, but it will enable them to expand service to lower usage areas without downlinks.