[stephbu]

At 550km altitude, each Starlink satellite in low-earth orbit has a visible horizon of only about 700mi, and I suspect usable range that is much smaller, probably low 100’s of miles. To extend range to a ground-station beyond that will probably take multiple peer satellite hops - I suspect that inter-satellite bandwidth is a a precious commodity - and priced as such.

[mlyle]

I think you're confusing the horizon of places on the surface of Earth that you can see with the distance to another satellite you can see.

6900km from the center of Earth. Figure you don't want the link to point within 150km (6500km) of Earth, to not pass through much atmosphere and to not see too much atmospheric glow (even with narrow filters, this matters).

Effectively you have an isosceles triangle with 6900km on the common side and an altitude of 6500km (tangent to "top of atmosphere" at 150km.

sqrt((6900^2 - 6500^2)) * 2 =~ 4600km