Tanya Weaver Mon 6 Jan 2025
Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/01/06/amazons-satellite-operation-plans-launch-uk-broadband-service
Amazon’s satellite operation Project Kuiper – founded by Jeff Bezos – plans to launch a broadband service in the UK, which will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Low-Earth orbit (LEO) space is filling up with satellite constellations that aim, when complete, to give total broadband internet coverage around the world.
Satellites that orbit the Earth in LEO, which ranges from as low as 550km to as high as 2,000km, reduce the latency effect associated with satellites in a much higher orbit. As such, satellites in this region of space will be able to provide internet to even the most remote areas of the globe.
Currently Starlink is dominating the LEO region. However, according to a regulatory filing reported in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, Project Kuiper (a subsidiary of Amazon) said it would seek access to British radio frequencies “over the next one to two years” as it prepares to offer a satellite broadband service.
Project Kuiper announced earlier in 2022 that it had secured up to 83 launches from three commercial space companies – Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance – which should have enough capacity to carry into space the majority of the 3,236 satellites that make up its satellite constellation.
Project Kuiper, which launched its first prototypes in 2023, expects to begin deploying its satellite constellation in LEO in early 2025 and plans to roll out its broadband service in the UK later this year.
However, to do this it requires approval from UK communications regulator Ofcom. The licence will allow it to operate terminals in the UK for direct-to-device services, which connect smartphones directly to satellites.
Direct-to-device services could “present a secure communication option for government, defence and emergency response use cases”, Amazon said in the filings.
According to an article in The Guardian, the company called for Ofcom to grant satellite providers access to radio spectrum “across all frequencies allocated for terrestrial mobile services and all geographic areas”, as long as they can show they will not interfere with existing mobile networks.
A final decision on Kuiper’s licence is pending, after a consultation closed in October on Ofcom’s proposal to approve it.
Meanwhile, Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin is set to launch its first orbital rocket New Glenn very soon following a successful “hot-fire” test at the end of December.
Bezos took to X to post a video of the test:
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