Comment by drzaiusx11

You mentioned beam contention as the key problem, which consensus networks solve at the cost of latency at the high end. As for bandwidth, in theory, you get the full network speed when it's "your turn", so that looks somewhat "bursty" when cycle lengths are too high from high demand. Naturally it evens out at human perception timescales appearing as lower bandwidth though. And obviously there's a saturation point where it no longer makes sense to continue slicing the pie and more complex mitigation strategies like exp back off, priority queuing, varying cycle lengths, etc need to be added into the mix.

To decrease that latency in high density areas like cities they'd need to reach for something like terrestrial microwave relays to add more connection points from adjacent (in horizon) "freer skies"