Maybe they launch a sattelite because an older one is nearing the end of its life. Maybe there’s an issue with one and they need to replace it. I doubt they can add sattelite just for bandwidth. I doubt SXM radios are SDR tuners. They have a hard coded, fixed tuning bandwidth. In fact in my Mazda the radio only goes up to channel 199 or so. I rented a VW before and it went to like 399. My wife’s Nissan has the same channel lineup as my Mazda. It’s missing stuff like Facton, Yacht Rock, and many others in the 300’s. What we do is just pay for one real radio (my wife’s) and I use CarPlay in my car. That way the audio quality is better and the channel selection is far superior. The app is not without issues though. The “Recents” is rarely correct or up to date. Sometimes I’ll get “menu item does not exist” when choosing a channel. Sometimes favorites don’t load at all. I’ve had black screens, or no channels to choose from. It’s widely known that the SXM iPhone and CarPlay experience is terrible. When it does work it’s great.
Another issue and I think this is an iPhone CarPlay issue… some car radios don’t let you scroll through a list that is too long. It will only go so far and then stop. I got around that in my car with the Mazda AIO tweaks hack and simply “enable touchscreen when in motion” resolved that. One time a guy hit me in the side and his insurance put me in a Ford Edge and that CarPlay was limited too where I could only page down so far. No known hacks or workarounds that I could find.
Lastly, we never pay full price. Last time I renewed at a discounted rate via chat. I didn’t even have to pick up the phone. We always say we will quit a few times and we end up with another deal. That’s worked for our DirecTV too but SXM has the biggest discounts over MSRP.