It’s official, Amazon had joined the race to create a network of satellites in low Earth orbit to provide high speed broadband terrestrial internet services.
The company has filed its first official papers with the U.S. government and was approved to launch a network of 3,236 satellites through a subsidiary named Kuiper Systems LLC, according to GeekWire.
“Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world,” Amazon confirmed in a statement. “This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet. We look forward to partnering on this initiative with companies that share this common vision.”
Named after an astronomer who’s considered “the father of modern planetary science,” Gerard Kuiper, Kuiper Systems is the latest initiative into space-based internet networking by U.S. tech giant.
As private companies look towards commercializing space, high-speed internet is among the possibilities to offer the highest profits in the short term, while providing necessary services to get the remaining 3.8 billion people who don’t have access to the internet online.
In February, OneWeb, another company that’s expected to create a network of satellites to also provide high speed internet access, successfully launched its first satellites. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised at least $3 billion from investors, including Virgin, Coca-Cola and the Bharti Group — and they are not the only company to raise more than a billion dollars to develop similar services.
In addition to its leading position as launch services provider to companies looking to enter the outer space, SpaceX also has designs for creating a global satellite network.
Past December, the company started a journey to raise another $500 million to support its Starlink program, which could would create a network of 11,000 satellites to cover the whole world with internet. Till now, the company has launched only two prototype satellites, although earlier reports stated Space X estimated it would have 400 satellites in orbit by the end of 2018.
Finally, the social networking giant Facebook has been working on satellites of its own. In a May 2018 report, the IEEE Spectrum showed how Facebook had set up a small subsidiary named PointView Tech which was developing a new satellite called “Athena” that would deliver data 10 times faster than SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
It’s impressive how Amazon’s Kuiper satellite service would complement the work that another Jeff Bezos company, Blue Origin, is conducting on the design, development, and production of launch vehicles to take payloads into orbit.
Blue Origin had already signed contracts for a multi-launch agreement with Telesat, which is another company that’s developing a low Earth orbit constellation of satellites that will deliver fiber-like broadband services across the globe.
