It was an obvious market, that was visible years before the project was announced. I don't think any one was surprised, it was not like Apple launching iPod or the iPhone.

What was impressive is at that they solved a lot of hard problems like satellite manufacturing at scale, phased array dishes, or fleet management of thousands of satellites or laser interconnects between satellites, and so on, for basically a side project to increase their primary product demand enough to justify the reuse being a useful feature.