Seems rather primitive when you stop and think about it.
The idea of wireless communication is only just a little bit more glamorous, because it's really the only thing that will assist humanity as part of space travel. And because we know light signals have pretty high fidelity across vast distances of (mostly) empty space.
But, solid state conductors, even if not purely contiguous due to repeaters and amplifiers, still seem pretty rational, when you start to think about what conductive transmission mediums actually do, especially as compared to emission filaments and diodes as broadcast signal sources.
Fixed links mean the signal can be narrowed so that less other things interfere with it and it interferes less with other things. There isn't contention or the crowded room effect (like an apartment complex stuffed with WiFi nodes).
The fixed nature also allows for a more optimal end point configuration. (Lower power, longer distance, etc)
> Satellites are in low Earth orbit at a height of approximately 485 mi (781 km) and inclination of 86.4°
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
Let's just say it makes you appreciate download managers a lot. The same appreciation was not extended to my IT department, which had decided -without informing me- that the service tool I had installed prior to departure was a potential risk and had quietly removed it...
Besides, if you are less -ahem- cost-sensitive, Inmarsat offers FleetBroadband which from geostationary orbit easily gives you >100kbps (as long as you are not anywhere near the poles!)
As an added bonus, rain fade is not much of an issue; I believe it uses L band. (Same as GPS/GLONASS/Galileo)
Trying to one text messages in and one out was a 20 minute affair in the rainy mountains of Peru with Iridium. Globalstar data service seemed to have random drops and periods where connection was impossible, even in dry weather.
FleetBroadband sounds interesting.
That being said, once you've laid the cable, fiber optic is fast, they typically over-provide the cables when they lay them, and they can often increase capacity by improvements at the endpoints. Radio to LEO seems unlikely to compete with that, but for less-populous and/or poorer islands it might make sense.