Amazon's Kuiper Systems satellite network, established in 2019 will work similarly to Starlink once all of the satellites arrive in low earth orbit. It's part of the Devices and Services division at Amazon responsible for Kindle, Echo, Fire TV, eero and Ring products. marketwatch.com
100 MBPS UltraCompact Kuiper Terminal — This service level might be included in your Amazon membership, especially for connecting IoT (Internet of Things)
Project Kuiper’s Medium-sized customer terminal measures less than 11 inches square and 1-inch thick. Without its mounting bracket, it weighs less than five pounds and it will be able to deliver speeds of up to 400 Mbps. While Amazon expects to produce its standard customer terminal for less than $400 each, they’ll likely cost more for customers - or not if Amazon has a reason to price these devices at cost as they have for Echos.
Project Kuiper’s Largest and most powerful customer terminal which measures 19 inches by 30 inches. It’s designed with enterprise, government and telecommunication companies in mind and will deliver speeds up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps).
Amazon says its “service offerings may vary from country to country” in order to find “the right pricing and service for customers in each region”. Early customers may be able to obtain terminals next year.
Low Earth-Orbit requires 3,236 satellites but brings faster speed with lower power
Project Kuiper is based out of a state-of-the-art facility in Redmond, Washington where satellites and hardware is developed and built.
More than 1,000 engineers, programmers and support personnel are currently working on the project both in Redmond as well as at Amazon’s labs in New York City, Austin, Denver, San Diego and Washington DC. To get satellites in the sky, the company announced in a blog post that it's going to build a new satellite processing facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's set to be completed this year year and be fully operational in 2025.
One of the things that sets the satellites used in Project Kuiper apart is that each one will also feature an active propulsion system. This way, Amazon has the "ability to control each satellite throughout every phase of its mission" according to a blog post from the company.
Just as important as Project Kuiper's customer terminals is Amazon's custom baseband chip powering them. The “Prometheus” chip combines the processing power of a 5G modem chip, a cellular base station’s capabilities and the ability of a microwave backhaul antenna to support point-to-point connections.
Amazon's Prometheus chips will also be used in the satellites and ground gateway antennas, allowing the system to process up to 1 terabit per second (Tbps) of traffic on board each of Project Kuiper's satellites.
In April of last year, Amazon finalized launch contracts with three different launch providers, including Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliancefor 83 launches over the next ten years. Based on its license with the FCC though, Amazon will be required to deploy and operate at least half of its 3,236 satellites by July 2026.
It may take some time but if Amazon puts all of the resources at its disposal into Project Kuiper but once it does, Starlink as well as HughesNet and Viasat will have some serious competition on their hands. Stay tuned to this page for all the latest news on Project Kuiper as we’ll update this page once we learn more on Amazon’s new satellite internet service. |
