CloudLink

Hundreds or thousands of these hot air balloons that carry the same communications systems as satellites are powered by laser stations along their flight path as they're moved along by the jet stream.

Hanging below the balloons are the heating systems powered by the heat from ground lasers hitting specially configured absorbtive plates that act as heating elements. The laser absorbing panels under the gondola get hit with the ground based lasers which in turn heat air pumped through a tube up into the balloon above.

There's no reason these couldn't circle the earth for months if not years without being brought down for maintenance, but when that did become necessary, instead of having to send a spaceship up like you'd have to do with current communication satellites, you'd just push the "Land at next base" button.

So basically, re-usable, maintainable VERY low Earth orbit satellites. And free to launch, you just let them go.

Goes without saying there are solar panels on top to get their electricity from so might be more accurate to call these semi-dirigibles. Might be able to get some juice from the lasers too.

I think it would be cool to just try a cross Atlantic flight with a laser mounted on an airplane flying at the same speed as the jet stream and seeing how often you need to zap it. Although that could be easily calculated, but cheaper proof of concept that setting up multiple laser stations.

Once you did that you could put up enough laser stations around globe to get your first record setting ground powered around the world balloon flight and start getting investors for this new communications satellite replacement or augmentation system.

Might be able to embed the envelope itself with something laser absorbent but seems like that would probably add weight, dunno. Plus the suspended heating element might lend itself to power generation too.