Amazon Is Taking On Starlink With Its Own Satellite Internet
It's a gigantic market, and Amazon wants in. Commercial high speed Internet service from space, dominated right now by SpaceX, Amazon is now in the game with the recent launch of Amazon LEO 8. Amazon says they are now ready to go into direct competition with Starlink.
what has happend?
This latest Atlas 5 rocket launch gives Amazon 29 more satellites to put into their current “constellation” of 396 satellites and completes their first goal of providing high speed broadband Internet connections from space. This helps them to provide full continuous connectivity coverage to “internal latitudes”.
Chris Webber. vice president of business and product for Amazon LEO is quoted as saying, ‘Still lots of work ahead — including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude — but we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this year, and future missions just add coverage and capacity’
According to geekwire.com,
‘Amazon has been beta-testing the service for months with a select group of customers, but connectivity hasn’t been continuous due to sparse orbital coverage. Amazon Leo’s business plan calls for launching commercial service within a limited zone concentrated at mid-northern and mid-southern latitudes, and gradually expanding the service area as more satellites go up.’
What happens next?
Amazon LEO still has a long way to go before they catch up to Starlink. Currently, Starlink has about 12 million customers, with approximately 10,000 satellites currently in orbit. When Amazon finishes completing their first build out of satellites, they will be resting at about 3,232. They expect that build out of satellite placement to finish sometime in 2029.
Currently there's no word on what the pricing of Amazon LEO Satellite Internet service is going to cost, but one would assume that it's going to be at or a little less than the $55 a month for the base residential service that Starlink provides now.
Made in Seattle.
Interestingly, both Amazon LEO and Starlink satellites are manufactured in the Seattle area.
The one issue that no one's talking about, at least not in public, is how Increasingly cluttered the skies above us are going to become as both companies move forward.
Someone has to be paying attention to this clutter issue.
Who are they and what do they think of all of this?
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Gallery Credit: Rik Mikals