Internet from space – made possible by thousands of satellites launched by a private company. The idea of Musk’s Starlink service is well known. Now Amazon also wants to get involved and is launching the “Kuiper” project.
The small town of Cle Elum in the US state of Washington with 2000 inhabitants. Everything is rather rural. Deanna Haverfield owns a coffee shop, she complains about the slow internet. “People can’t make video calls or work here,” she says in the Amazon company video. The message: this should get better.
Starting next year, Amazon wants to launch more than 3,000 satellites into space, and a little later the first customers should be able to use the service. “We’re investing ten billion dollars,” says Amazon’s Rusty Thomas in the video. “We want to bring broadband Internet to every point in the world.”
Up to one gigabit per second
It is not yet clear in which countries the service will start and at what prices. Customers should be able to choose between different receiving terminals. The standard size is almost 30 cm wide and long. This variant is said to have a speed of up to 400 megabits per second. More expensive variants are said to be fast at up to one gigabit per second. Faster than many cable connections in more rural areas.
For four years, around 1,000 employees have been busy building up the division at Amazon. SpaceX boss Elon Musk called Amazon boss Jeff Bezos “copy cat” in a tweet in 2019. He copied the idea.
Amazon wants to be cheaper than SpaceX
However, Amazon apparently has its sights set on the mass market and wants to be cheaper than the competition. A manager told Forbes magazine they want prices to be as low as possible. According to the website, Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, currently charges 100 euros per month and a one-off fee for the hardware of 450 euros.
The new players could become a problem for established Internet and mobile communications providers. The payment service Amazon Prime has 200 million customers worldwide. Amazon could try to sell “Kuiper” access to many of these customers as well. There were also reports in June that Amazon customers in the US could potentially get free cell phone plans in the future. The Telekom share then lost significantly in value.