> I'm also curious what physical or ground station-related developments happen to enable this? The v1.0 satellites have no intersat links, so the only way to g

> I'm also curious what physical or ground station-related developments happen to enable this? The v1.0 satellites have no intersat links, so the only way to get coverage with them is to connect to a satellite that is close enough to a functioning ground station. This is the coastal coverage shown. The v1.5 satellites they are launching right now contain laser links that let them forward incoming packets to other satellites until they reach one that can contact a ground station, but there are not enough of them up there to provide constant coverage anywhere yet. According to this map, by some time in Q4 there will be enough v1.5 sats up to cover the entire mid-latitudes. They get coverage first because the orbits SpaceX are using cause satellites to spend most of their time near these areas. Eventually SpaceX will launch polar sats and just have enough sats up total that they can cover both the poles and the equator. (The bands of coverage should be symmetric around the equator, so either the map is drawn imprecisely or you got your latitudes wrong.)