Compared to what their architecture should enable. Sure, it's more satellites consumed per request but there aren't _that_ many satellites between some random point in the Pacific and the nearest base station. Certainly seems like it's not scaling that well if the price jumps from ~$120 to $5000.
It seems more of a question of supply and demand than a limitation of their technology. If the competition currently charges more than $5000, why should they charge (much) less?
