Larger antennas and better beamforming are routing calls through orbit
This seems to be strictly about high data rate applications and the certainly soon to be extremely goofy world of "6G."
That’s the type of service these new services are going to be providing in their first phase, just (if all goes well) with unmodified mobile devices.
I’d guess we’re some time away from broadband data to unmodified phones, but in the end, it’s just a function of available power per square meter in the downlink, i.e. how many satellites can be launched and how tightly their beams can be focused, and of reflector size in the uplink (since the transmit power of 4G/5G devices is fixed at about 1-2% that of Iridium).