Compatibility
There are sat phone services and it could make more sense to use terrestrial antennas with the towers served by satellite links. A concern I would have is if trying to have standard phones work with satellites, if that would preclude using land based service due to interference. The cost of building, launching and maintaining the satellites has always made it too expensive since the customer base they are going after are often in out of the way places with very low densities of users. I have my Ham license and a GROL (commercial) license as well so if I was going to go far out, I could still have comms if I wanted them. Last year during Field day I was taking responses from half way around the world and we could hear a satellite pass, but nobody was quick enough to get a contact before it was over the horizon.