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They could do some cool 1-way Forward Error Correctioned broadcasts with that. “Point your phone in the sky here for your daily news updates” kinda thing. Could be localized with spot beams in a future iteration.

Or get a fancy holder and hold in place for an hour to get X minutes of video updates.

Or overnight for the latest AppleTV banger.

Basically a mini-direcTV.

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The bandwidth is far too low for that.

But it's for sending messages

Correct, and nothing stops Apple from reversing that connection and sending messages to users

Friend of a friend works the satellite trucks for onsite broadcasting at sports events. He told me once that he phones the satellite operators and they coordinate to make sure the beams are aligned as tightly as possible to reduce the power loading on the satellite. I’m guessing there’s probably a similar constraint here — I don’t think (pure conjecture) it’s feasible to have a tonne of iPhones (and let’s be honest, they’re everywhere) hanging off satellites.

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