Comment by erentz

It gets better. The speed of light in a fiber optic cable is about 2/3rds of C. The proposed system (from what I understand) essentially uses free space optics between the constellation of satellites as the backbone. Instead of regular satellite internet service which routes up to a satellite then down to a ground station then over a fiber optic backbone. SpaceX’s system will route traffic across the constellation of satellites then down directly to the remote end (or the closest egress point to whatever the remote end is if they aren’t on the network). This means although total distance travelled is longer, the speed it’s travelling at is 1/3rd faster. So overall this will become very interesting for latency sensitive long distance communications.