so that the only interference they encounter is bureaucratic and friendly.
Bureaucratic and friendly... there's two words I never thought I'd see used together.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will next week discuss changes to satellite constellation regulation and fees, an effort needed to keep space useful for communications The ITU currently charges flat fees when called upon to consider how to accommodate a satellite's communications needs, a scheme developed a …
Mass market mobile or internet. It's still not as much capacity as a fibre bunch cable serving one street.
The limit is launch costs. If they were low enough then you might see a 10,000 sat constellation. Geo satellites are 4 x 22K mile round trip. Closer satellites (low latency) whizz past quickly so you need 1000s just for the traffic of one multi-beam Ka band geo-sat.
The probability that one 'rapid disassembly' will have a reasonable chance of causing another has been calculated numerous times. I seem to remember that if you pick the right orbit then a bit of precession, etc. will effectively obliterate anything in a similar orbit. But it's a long time since I was last at a space debris conference, so I don't remember the details.
And the lower the orbit, the shorter the lifespan. Even then, operators resort to microcells to provided acceptable level of service in subscriber dense areas - there's no way these low orbit satellites could support this type of service. And limiting interference will be a challenge. I'd also be curious of power requirements for the uplink from cell phone.