I think the author is remembering 15 years ago when the first satellite internet companies existed. I remember trying to play Warcraft 3 at a friend's house in

I think the author is remembering 15 years ago when the first satellite internet companies existed. I remember trying to play Warcraft 3 at a friend's house in the country and having 2-3 second pings. Those companies were using Geosynchronous satellites so that dishes could point at a single spot in the sky. Unfortunately, geosynchronous orbit is at a height of 35,786 km. That means almost 120ms just to reach the satellite, plus another 120ms to get the signal back down to earth, then your request hitting the real internet and another 240ms to get back to you over the same two satellite hops. SpaceX's Starlink will be <1000 km up in low earth orbit, so somewhere under 5ms away at speed of light. For any transmission across an ocean, Starlink will be much faster (so you just know high speed trading companies will be big customers). How much bandwidth it offers remains to be seen.