You seem to only consider the roundtrip to the satellite and back. To talk to anything other than the satellite itself, you need to double that. The lowest allo

You seem to only consider the roundtrip to the satellite and back. To talk to anything other than the satellite itself, you need to double that. The lowest allowed angle to the horizon is 25°. This makes the worst-case RTT for talking to someone near you on the ground 17ms. > They may actually need in total more satellites than at higher orbits. This is a desirable feature. There are limits on how much bandwidth they can push through a single satellite, and minimum allowed angular separations between two satellites the same place can be talking to. Lower orbit allow larger constellations, because the ground stations cumulatively have "more sky". The primary reason to push for VLEO is that it is a safer orbit. As a general rule, everyone is better off the lower large constellations are, because in case of a worst-case collision the debris will deorbit faster. It's also better for astronomy.