“Follow the money. Some donor is gonna make big bucks from this. Betcha.”
This is probably about unused space on the Iridium system.
Iridium is a system of 56 low orbit satellites that was supposed to compete with terrestrial cell phones. The phones were too bulky and very few commercial custormers signed up and the project went bankrupt.
However, the US military was interested in Iridium since you could get cell service anywhere and Iridium is now a mostly US military system.
So the bandwidth costs nothing, the satellites are already up and paid for by the bond holders losing all their money. Maintenence is done by the US military.
All you have to do is give away a few thousand handsets and you are good to go.
Thanks for the info. You may be right.