That would be a reasonable expectation, but I want to remember this being talked about as a revolution for internet in the US; how much better it would be compared to shitty cable providers and how you would get Gigabit speeds without having to run fibre.

Sure, it looked impressive early on, but a wireless system like this will always degrade the more customers they get.

To be fair, the network being crushed by high demand is extremely unsurprising. Cellular networks have always had this problem in dense areas, where it’s no way you’re reaching the advertised speed. This is mainly due to the available channels being shared by everyone in a relatively large area, connected to the same cell. Which is mitigated somewhat by setting up more cells with shorter range for a higher cell density in cities.

How could a satellite based network ever scale? Where you have what, a handful available cells to cover an entire state?

That doesn’t make much sense, how is a completely different infrastructure going to help their capacity issues? Unless the plan is to pivot from satellite to 5G or something