Amazon Will Invest Over $10 Billion In Its Satellite Internet Network

[groveChuck]

"The Federal Communications Commission declared on Thursday that Amazon may build its ambitious satellite internet system,
which would compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network.

Amazon’s project, known as Kuiper, would see the company launch 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit.
Amazon says it will deploy the satellites in five phases, with broadband service beginning once it has 578 satellites in orbit.


“We conclude that grant of Kuiper’s application would advance the public interest by authorizing a system designed to increase the availability of
high-speed broadband service to consumers, government, and businesses,” the FCC secretary Marlene Dortch said in its authorization order.

After the FCC announced the authorization, Amazon said that it “will invest more than $10 billion” into Kuiper.

“There are still too many places where broadband access is unreliable or where it doesn’t exist at all. Kuiper will change that. Our $10 billion investment will create jobs and infrastructure around the United States that will help us close this gap,” Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp said in a statement.

The company has not outlined a timeline for Kuiper and the FCC said the company has not finished the satellites’ design.
But Morgan Stanley has declared the high-speed internet network has the potential to be a ”$100 billion opportunity” for Jeff Bezos’ company.

Kuiper is poised to go toe-to-toe with SpaceX’s Starlink network of high-speed internet satellites, which Elon Musk’s company has been steadily launching for the past year.
SpaceX has launched more than 500 Starlink satellites and aims to begin offering direct-to-consumer broadband service later this year."

~~~

Amazon vs Tesla
Bezos vs Musk

You gotta love a good space battle, even if no lasers or phasers are used.
Maybe not Star Wars, but Satellite Wars? Orbit Wars? Billionaire Battles???


https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/fcc-...t-network.html

[mcbob]

I'm rooting for Starlink. Amazopoly can suck it.

[groveChuck]

So you're voting for the Tesla Twitter Tirade Tyrant?

[DLD]

Actually, this is an anti-Google move. Next up are Intel and Microsoft. After that Comcast and AT&T.

https://searchcloudcomputing.techtar...ustom-hardware

[Tom Roper]

I just threw away the dish, now this.

[mcbob]

So you're voting for the Tesla Twitter Tirade Tyrant?

Absolutely. They may both be crony capitalists, but Elon’s got more moxy.

[TommyJ]

In July 2019, Amazon received permission to launch satellites. The plan was to launch 1,500 satellites by 2026. The latest news I heard about the tests of Blue Origin launch vehicles always contained the words delayed, postponed, etc. In official statements, the company insists it is concerned about the health of its employees in the wake of the pandemic.
But I think that with such a pace they will have to delegate the launch of the Kuiper part to other companies. There are really many new companies now that can offer this service. But on this scale, it will be a lot of fun if they have to go to the competitors they wanted to bypass for help)

[Bassman2003]

Gosh, the low earth orbit area is going to be crowded with football satellites. I don't know if I care who succeeds as I have AT&T gigabit now and love it but better speeds for all is a much needed thing for the future.

[DLD]

I am not sure the Americans care much about speed anymore.

https://decisiondata.org/news/analys...ternet-speeds/

[TommyJ]

A group of British and Japanese engineers from University College London, research companies Xtera and KDDI Research have recorded a new world record for Internet speed: 178 TB/sec. This speed is enough to download the entire Netflix video library in one second.

Such a high speed has been achieved due to a new technology capable of transmitting a signal at a frequency of 16.9 THz, which significantly increases the throughput of the fiber-optic cable.

This means that there will be no need to lay new cables to implement record-breaking Internet speeds for the mass consumer. It will only be necessary to improve the amplifiers every 100 km of the laid fiber-optic cable.

Today, the highest internet speed available for ordinary users reaches 10 Gb / s. It can only be used by residents of small areas in Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.

NASA's Internet network (ESnet), used by scientists and researchers, provides speeds of 400 Gb/s.

In May 2020, engineers from Australian universities Monash, Swinburne, and RMIT reported that they were able to achieve speeds of 44.2 TB/s.

But this record was also broken a few months ago by a group of researchers from Japan: the Internet speed was fixed at 150 TB/sec.


Based on this, I would not assume that anyone does not care about speed.