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Are we, really? If you can put a satellite into space for 8k, why not put a thousand satellites into space, accept that some of them will fail, and have that much more of a network for the money?

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The $8,000 satellites are put into low-earth orbit (160–1,200 km), where as these would require a geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km). The increased mass and orbit requires a lot more lift, i.e. fuel, i.e. money.

But if you had a swarm of them...

If you had a swarm of them, they would still not be viable telecom satellites.

Why not?

Well, because they'll die in a matter of weeks, for one. Sending up a swarm of them just makes the loss costlier and thus strengthens the case for sending up a proper satellite.

Not only that a swarm would function like space junk. Imagine NORAD trying to track 100 satellites eventually one will probably hit something important.

I'm assuming there are some minimum equipment and power generation requirements to communicate with cell phones on earth that go above and beyond what a single $8k satellite can offer.

But it's possible that it's just so new that noone has started using them like that.

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