We decided against launching them because the laser would have a limited power supply and could only deorbit X amount of debris before completely depleting its power supply; something solar panels can't effectively recharge (well you'd need A LOT of them). Combine that with cost for launch, it gets pretty expensive to deorbit only a few satellites.

Because of this we went with surface based lasers; they could be recharged using the local grid and clean a specific section of the sky. We looked at placing lasers at locations with high altitude and cross referenced them with the local $ per kilowatt hour. Never really got to the stage of deciding where to place one since we were still stuck with figuring out the market for it. I guess someones active satellite needs to get Sandra Bullocked by some old debris before we start going "hey. there's a market for cleanup!".

The ISS is currently looking into a laser system to clean up debris if i remember correctly. I guess if they ever figure out the person who uses it would get to call him/herself "ISS Door Gunner"