Pedantry?
I thought we already had satellite broadband deployed and working. It's expensive but if you live in the middle of nowhere, it's probably the only option. The latency (to geosynchronous orbit and back) is a right royal pain.
So this is actually a test of of linking low-earth-orbit satellites into a grid or mesh using free-space lasers. If they can't link them up, LEO is fairly useless because your satellite broadband would keep dropping out every time a satellite went out of view. (Not sure why linking them up using microwaves, same as ground-to-satellite links, is ruled out).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
