Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, two tycoons who until recently fought over who was the richest man in the world, are going to take their rivalry to the sector of satellite internet terminals.
Amazon is already beginning to compete against Elon Musk's Starlink, and presented three client terminals of its upcoming high-speed satellite internet service, dubbed the
Kuiper Project.
The company owned by Jeff Bezos showed new compact devices designed to be
installed outside
buildings in order to communicate with satellites.
These new terminals, designed for families and small businesses, measure less than 30 centimeters wide and weigh less than 3 kilos.
As Amazon has announced, the Kuiper Project will also have
another smaller terminal model
, which will act as a more portable and affordable option.
The presented device will provide speeds of up to 400 megabits per second, while the economic one will reach 100 Mbps. The company's largest terminal, aimed at business and government customers, will offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second
.
Amazon assured that it expects to produce the terminals for "
less than 400 dollars each
", although it withdrew that it is still far from setting the prices for the terminals and the broadband service.
Direct competition to Starlink.
Starlink is one of Musk's largest investments.
Photo Reuters
The Kuiper Project aims to offer internet to its customers through a constellation made up
of more than 3,000 broadband satellites
.
In other words, it is the service with which Amazon will compete against SpaceX's Starlink system, which already has more than 2,000 satellites in orbit that offer internet to users in dozens of countries
.
The technology giant hopes to reach tens of millions of people with this satellite internet service.
Amazon expects to launch production satellites in the first half of 2024 and could start offering
internet service to customers later this year.
In addition, the company plans to launch two prototype satellites into space in May to begin generating its own constellation around the Earth.
In total, Amazon is expected to fly a total of
83 missions
over a five-year period to put 3,236 satellites into orbit.
more competitors
The Starlink satellite train.
AP Photo
The massive constellation of satellites operated by SpaceX, which continues to grow, will soon be joined by many more
competitors to provide broadband
from space for commercial purposes, but also to serve the strategic interests of states.
When high-speed internet access began to spread through constellations of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites about eight years ago, analysts expected only two or three companies to succeed.
"
But the number keeps growing
," Caleb Henry, research director at Quilty Analytics, told AFP at the annual SATELLITE 2023 conference in Washington this week.
At least eight companies are currently competing to launch or complete their LEO constellations, including early entrants SpaceX and OneWeb.
Amazon plans to launch more than
3,200 satellites
as part of its Kuiper project.
But governments are also ready to join the race.
China plans to launch 13,000 satellites as part of its GuoWang constellation, while Canada's Telesat will add 300 and German start-up Rivada
some 600.
That will be in addition to the European Union's Iris project (170 satellites) and the 300 to 500 satellites that the US military's Space Development Agency plans to launch.
"The involvement of sovereign interests" in this issue was underestimated, Henry said.
While some 120 satellites were launched in all of 2012, just in the first two months of this year
almost 380 were put into orbit.
look too
Elon Musk's satellite internet, direct to cell phone: Starlink's global coverage is coming
Elon Musk's winks towards Argentina: from Catamarcan lithium to the single currency with Brazil
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/64IMUBBOIZEUXMA6MUFZQMQHHE.jpg)
