Some of them will fly even lower in the later phases. But 45° is also wrong, they go as low as 25° above the horizon now. Which means that the maximum radius that a satellite can cover should be around 500km if my last calculations were correct and I remember correctly.

Under ideal conditions you could have internet up to 1000km off the coast then even without laserlink. Under normal conditions it would be more like 500km from the nearest ground station.

I'm still hoping that they can use user terminals as ground stations for these maritime scenarios.