Still far from what you would expect from a truly automated production line, but it has dedicated stations that allows workers to assemble multiple satellites in parallel.
A satellite dish does not transmit any information to the satellite. Satellite TV is a pure broadcast system in the forward direction.
Moreover, comparing a parabolic receiver with a phased array is quite unfair. The amount and complexity of the electronics and processing power required is several orders of magnitude different.
I agree, this was the real reason why the project failed. Moreover, it was not clear at all that fractionation would bring any lifecycle costs savings, neither that any of the alleged extra flexibility (and maneuverability, resiliency, maintenability, and other -ilities) would result in any added value for the missions.
Fractionation is very hard,it introduces a lot of complexity in the design and interfaces, and it requires lots of coordination between multiple vendors. Project Ara by Google (a modular cellphone similar to Phoneblocks) also vouched for this idea of fractionation (and in fact was also led by Paul Ermenko) and was also cancelled.
I think that 5M is a high number (at least with the current number of satellites and their architecture), specially if they do not apply data caps.
I would say that 1M customers in the US is a more reasonable figure. If they hit these number, I expect the performance to degrade significantly.