This first generation of satellites doesn't even have inter-satellite lasers. So those extra hops will never be an issue. It's a moot point. The 20ms number is about the first generation.
But some day, when those links exist, if data goes halfway around the world via satellite, it would be stupid to say "gotcha! longer than 20ms!". That's a complete misunderstanding of the context, and complaining about something that makes the data go faster.
If someone was going to use multi-hop results to 'disprove' 20ms, they don't even need data. Just look at the speed of light. Bam, already disproven! But that's because it's not what the 20ms number was talking about. He wasn't promising to violate causality.
Nobody has ever claimed 20ms to go around the world, because that's physically impossible. He did claim ping times would be 20ms, which is patently false, even within CONUS. There is no "second generation" to date. They have not been launched or tested. So the more of v1 that are out, the less v2 you can launch without deorbiting a very expensive part of the fleet.
But if we need to look at the numbers later, doesn't that mean you're conceding the point about it being "clearly not going to happen" and "patently false" that it will ever reach the promised number?
Or do you think I'm delusional to say "maybe it will, maybe it won't" and you're just humoring me by offering to revisit?
So SpaceX only has 2 PoP locations, and it happens to be the areas where they are doing trials. As soon as the ground system needs to backhaul the signal over long fiber distances, things change quite a bit.
I'm maintaining these are best case numbers and that they'll go up when the service is live. I would bet you'll never see 20ms when paying customers are on it.
This first generation of satellites doesn't even have inter-satellite lasers. So those extra hops will never be an issue. It's a moot point. The 20ms number is about the first generation.
But some day, when those links exist, if data goes halfway around the world via satellite, it would be stupid to say "gotcha! longer than 20ms!". That's a complete misunderstanding of the context, and complaining about something that makes the data go faster.
If someone was going to use multi-hop results to 'disprove' 20ms, they don't even need data. Just look at the speed of light. Bam, already disproven! But that's because it's not what the 20ms number was talking about. He wasn't promising to violate causality.