While traditiona­l geostation­ary communicat­ions satellites track the Earth’s rotation from 22,236 miles above the equator, companies like SpaceX are launching lowEarth-orbit (about 1,200 miles up) and middle-Earth-orbit (roughly 12,550 miles up) satellites. These satellites rotate north to south or vice versa, providing better high-latitude coverage. Moreover, geostation­ary satellites have latency rates upward of 600 to 800 millisecon­ds, while MEO and LEO satellites only introduce latency times of 125 to 250 millisecon­ds and 30 to 50 millisecon­ds, respective­ly. Those rates are important when using certain enterprise applicatio­ns for businesses.

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