Gone are the days when satellite was scarcely mentioned with regard to the mobile market, except to provide backhaul or access in very remote areas or to emergency services – or because of disputes over spectrum allocations. Now, some companies are looking to use satellite spectrum for terrestrial 5G (Dish and Ligado in the US), while others want to expand the use cases for satellite networks to support a wide range of enterprise and consumer applications, and give the technology a central role in 5G. This week, satellite operator Telesat reported the results of a project with Vodafone and the University of Surrey in the UK, to carry out the world’s first demonstration of 5G backhaul using a low earth…