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ViaStat appear to be getting round the problem of request/responses taking ~ 0.5 second on geostationary satellite links (and hence leading to long delays to complete loading of web pages) by aggregating the multiple request/reponses for the web objects in a page. However this will not assist for real time applications such as gaming or haptic surgery or Voice over IP. For VoIP my concern is the RTT delays of 500ms for geostationary satellite plus any delays between the ground stations and the conversants, plus de-jitter buffer etc. exceeds the recommended specifications for VoIP (see for example http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/QoS and ITU-T G.114). In particular long delays reulst in difficulty for the conversants to know when the speaker is done.
Overall Summary
Satellites can last decades, but balloons and drones must be constantly replenished, and many more are needed to cover the Earth.
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