> They have to put at least 1 satellite into service. That's a huge cost for something that you have no intention of making an important part of your service.
apparently the cost of putting a satellite is only 8k ;)
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I see your joke but a communications satellite is a much larger cost than the 8k satellite. We are talking millions of dollars for one simple satellite.
Are we, really? If you can put a satellite into space for 8k, why not put a thousand satellites into space, accept that some of them will fail, and have that much more of a network for the money?
The $8,000 satellites are put into low-earth orbit (160–1,200 km), where as these would require a geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km). The increased mass and orbit requires a lot more lift, i.e. fuel, i.e. money.
But if you had a swarm of them...
If you had a swarm of them, they would still not be viable telecom satellites.
Why not?
Well, because they'll die in a matter of weeks, for one. Sending up a swarm of them just makes the loss costlier and thus strengthens the case for sending up a proper satellite.
I'm assuming there are some minimum equipment and power generation requirements to communicate with cell phones on earth that go above and beyond what a single $8k satellite can offer.
But it's possible that it's just so new that noone has started using them like that.