K-kid, the notion of low earth orbit satellites has been around for a while. First to scale was Motorola's Iridium, which provided comms for remote areas but had trouble make a go of it. Then, Teledesic. Back then, there were several issues - some of which might still plague Musk's plan.
One issue is cost. It's expensive to put things in orbit. That's gotten cheaper.
Another is latency -- Musk is looking at very low earth orbit (had to get an FCC exception for it) so that helps.
A third are the issues around bandwidth, power, and interference (with both others on nearby bands and possibly human biology given the power needed back then) The planned Teledesic design required fairly massive earth dishes - significantly larger than you'll see with something like a Hughes DirecPC dish. That too (the power needed on the satellite end and the sensitivity on the earth end) has gotten better.
All that said, the main use (IMO) for satellite coverage still seems to be to reach relatively rural and remote areas. Even in those areas, finding fiber somewhere and using radio relays is often cost effective. Or, just putting up a cell tower.
Bottom line, since more people are now living in urban areas, it doesn't seem to me that Musk's plan will dominate the market even today It's still going to be more expensive, with lower bandwidth, and lower reliability for the 70% or so of us in relatively urban areas. Could eventually be good news for you though, if you're in the other 30%. I'd guess it's maybe 50-50 they'll even get enough satellites up for broad coverage?