Amazon to pose fierce competition to SpaceX in satellite internet biz

E-commerce major Amazon has plans to provide satellite internet services using 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit through Project Kuiper.

The tech giant inked a multibillion-dollar contract in April which is the largest rocket agreement in the history of the commercial space sector.

This contract will enable Amazon to launch its Kuiper satellites with three entities: Europe’s Arianespace, United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

With this deal, Amazon provides a fitting response to SpaceX and Elon Musk with its Starlink network. The company first unveiled Project Kuiper in 2019, but its announcement last month provided significant momentum.

SpaceX’s Starlink has nearly 2,000 satellites in orbit, serving nearly 250,000 subscribers. SpaceX received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to deploy 12,000 satellites.

Although Amazon has not yet launched a single satellite, it could still become a major player in the game.

Caleb Henry, Quilty Analytics’ Senior Analyst, stated that the ecosystem is not centralized, and it is expected to have two or more constellations serving the residential consumer along with organizations and businesses that rely upon internet connectivity.

It is worth noting that approximately 37% of the global population is still devoid of internet services, with around 96% of those people residing in developing nations, as per data from the International Telecommunication Union.

Amazon joins a list of tech companies, alongside Google and Facebook, that have invested in the development of digital infrastructure to support their core services.

Mr. Henry pointed out that the AWS cloud service is the tech giant’s fastest-growing segment, and the company has developed extensive internet infrastructure to support this venture, whether it is fiber or data centers.

Space seems to be a natural extension of Amazon’s consumer business and data business of offering electronics, goods, and resources to people worldwide.

Source credits:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/01/amazon-takes-on-spacex-in-the-satellite-internet-with-project-kuiper.html