2) due to having a lot more birds in the air at lower altitude with newer tech, they should be competitive with 5G networks speed wise as compared to existing satellite internet.
Edit: fixed distance typo for HughesNet
Your numbers are off though. Firstly it's ~40ms up to the bird if it's right above you, then 40 down to the base station if it is next door to your house. If it's on the other side of the world and has to travel around the whole mesh, add a hundred ms at best. Then from the base station to the destination - which could be anywhere in the world, and back, then back up to the bird, then back down to you.
It's not going to be 40ms, probably not even 400ms, and there is no way it will be competitive with mobile 5G.
It might not even be competitive with the geostationary birds for accessing nearby hosts. 22k miles is ~120ms, so 240ms round trip - because the base station is generally pretty nearby. Say ~20ms both ways for in-country ping and you're looking at 520ms -ish total, which is reasonably consistent with my experience using it from the Solomon Islands.
Huawei's saying 1ms to the tower for 5G!
[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=800mi+%2F+speed+of+ligh...
Too late to edit. Misplaced the decimal point. Should have noticed that if 22k is 120, 800 can't possibly be 40. Duh.
Still, the actual latency is going to be very dependent on the distance to the base station. If it's nearby then shit, yeah, that will be within 20ms of 5G. Point conceded @jsjohnst.
So yes, my point still stands for the majority use case.
Also, to be clear, I was making following claims:
1) bandwidth on par with initial 5G deployments (aka up to 1gb/sec offering)
2) Latency on par or better than existing LTE networks.
This could open astounding possibilities if the prices are set within any kind of consumer-affordable level. I'm fairly interested in going on some long sail journeys, for example, but the total lack of connectivity (without a ruinously expensive and hence rare conventional satphone) gives me a lot of pause. What if something happens at work, or worse yet with my family, and i'm literally uncontactable, hundreds of miles offshore somewhere for a week? I know that for some people that's the point, but I wouldn't be able to stop worrying about it.
If your prognosis is correct then not only might it become feasible to be contactable on a boat for a reasonable outlay, you might even have friggin' broadband. For me and I suspect many others that's a very exciting idea.
(Know you likely know this, but not everyone does)