That can't be right. The satellites can only cover a diameter of 15 miles. Anyone living any further from a ground station is still SOL.
You can't steer the antenna back and forth for every exchange between station and customer. What the steering may get you is increasing the coverage of an area currently underserved by the constellation, and maybe a slight increase in diameter of ground covered due to the geometry, at the cost of lower signal strength.
>And for the last few years, lasercoms can route traffic inside the constellation so a given sat doesn't need to be within sight of a ground station.
Did they finally implement satellite-to-satellite links? Fine, if that actually works, they can indeed extend the range much further. I don't know if I believe it, though.
You can read this article. The lasers worked before February 2022, but you don't require them to have multiple spot beams.
Also, lookup the number of ISLs in orbit. Starlink has been providing coverage for the middle of the ocean for years now. They have provided coverage to Pacific Islands that have lost their undersea cable connections.
Even ignoring that they have multiple arrays, they use separate antennas to talk to the base stations on a different frequency band.
“if that actually works”??? It has been working successfully for large parts of the Earth for years.
Not many people live inside 15 miles of those stations, but Starlink is active in 23 countries.
South Africa has a POP but no ground station.