The lasers aren't used for ground-to-satellite comms. While they refer to some of them maintaining a link through the atmosphere, the lasers are intended for satellite-to-satellite communication way above the atmosphere.
There are some wavelengths that maintain decent signal quality through cloud cover, and even rainstorms. I cannot find the paper right now, but iirc Tightbeam (formerly from the Google sharks with lasers team, now spun out as Aalyria), demonstrated space to ground comms in adverse weather with negligible packet loss and something like 40% reduced bandwidth.
The customer terminals will likely never connect through lasers (because a laser can only point in one direction at a time), but moving the ground station uplink to a laser link sounds very beneficial.
It would fall back to radio and/or other connections. The laser connection would probably be sold at a discount rate due to the variable level of service.
The lasers aren't used for ground-to-satellite comms. While they refer to some of them maintaining a link through the atmosphere, the lasers are intended for satellite-to-satellite communication way above the atmosphere.
There are some wavelengths that maintain decent signal quality through cloud cover, and even rainstorms. I cannot find the paper right now, but iirc Tightbeam (formerly from the Google sharks with lasers team, now spun out as Aalyria), demonstrated space to ground comms in adverse weather with negligible packet loss and something like 40% reduced bandwidth.
The customer terminals will likely never connect through lasers (because a laser can only point in one direction at a time), but moving the ground station uplink to a laser link sounds very beneficial.
maybe it could route around the clouds via some other satellites
It would fall back to radio and/or other connections. The laser connection would probably be sold at a discount rate due to the variable level of service.
Interesting parallel to solar panels.