[chrisg23]

If you are trying to create satellite internet in low earth orbit (for reduced ping/latency) the satellite moves faster than the earth spins, and the user on the ground loses point to point contact. So there has to be another satellite already over the horizon before the first one goes out of view. Wiki says Starlink sats travel at about 340 miles above the ground.

The easiest alternative to implement is having the satellites in a geostationary orbit so that they are always above a single spot. The altitude necessary for this is higher than 20k miles, and results in very bad ping/latency. Inmarsat is one of these, and I had a chance to use it in the past. It was slow and laggy, as the realities of physics would suggest.

So more satellites means more potential coverage of the globe, or increased capacity over existing coverage regions, or both. It seems very important.

The Indian satellites in the article weighed on average around 6 kilograms. A starlink satellite weighs 227 kg. You can put more telecom equipment in 227 kg than in 6kg. A better metric than #of satellites is probably total mass of satellites, to make broad comparisons more meaningful.