The sky will be full of internet satellites

"In its attempt to keep pace with SpaceX and other competitors, Amazon is seeking FCC approval to put 3,236 interconnected broadband satellites into orbit.

Amazon’s prospective broadband satellite constellation, called Project Kuiper, was announced back in April, as first reported by GeekWire. Not much was known about the project, aside from the number of satellites involved and the intended orbits. Late last week, however, Amazon filed paperwork with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting approval to launch thousands of satellites into space, thereby providing a slew of new information about Project Kuiper.

In its FCC filing, Amazon claimed that 3.8 billion people around the world still don’t have reliable access to broadband internet, and that 21.3 million Americans don’t have access to fixed broadband.

“The Kuiper System will deliver satellite broadband communications services to tens of millions of unserved and underserved consumers and businesses in the United States and around the globe,” wrote Amazon in its application. The “non-geostationary satellite orbit system” will use the Ka-band frequencies, according to the company, and offer “fixed broadband communications services to rural and hard-to-reach areas.” The application also states the system will provide “high-throughput mobile broadband connectivity services for aircraft, maritime vessels and land vehicles.”"  Gizmodo

-------------

As part of Amazon's drive toward becoming the world's economy  Bezos and company are going to contest Musk's Starlink project with the goal of providing broad band internet service to the entire world.

Splendid!

Not by bread alone does man live.  He also needs Amazon.

The difference in function between Bezosnet (Kuiper) and Musk's Starlink is not clear to me.  The competition will be fierce.  This is always a good thing for the consumer.

The losers in all this satellite communications activity will be the present internet providers who will be cut out as unnecessary middle men.  pl

https://gizmodo.com/keeping-up-with-spacex-amazon-seeks-to-launch-more-tha-1836212485

Comments

[The Twisted Genius]

My younger son has FIOS internet only which is cheaper than copper phone service with all the extra fees. He streams all the TV he wants directly from the internet to his TV or his tablet while sitting on the couch. No Roku or anything like that. He paid for HBO during the Game of Thrones season then dropped it. I'm not sure what streaming service he's paying for now (Hulu, SlingTV, YoutubeTV?), but he has more content than I can ever watch. I think he's tried all the streaming services once he dropped the FIOS TV and phone service. He also gets a lot of free content such as pirated Caps hockey games through some guy in Russia during the season. It's high quality with only a few seconds delay.

[Lloyd D. Herod, Jr.]

Fred, I did not say that the difficulties that may be occurring to the fisherman was okay. I suspect and hope that fishing access will be worked out. Ocean structures become rich areas for fish and other ocean life. Wrecks, some sunk for the purpose of creating habitat, and other artificial structures put in place have created areas rich in ocean life. Those windmills may ending up helping the fishermen. The threat to bird life seems to be exaggerated, at least on land. If you can find solid data saying differently I'd be interested in seeing it. Besides I like windmills. Where I live we're getting a fair amount of them. I know they look better to me than the coal fired plant and its effluent the local utility company wanted to build.

[Rocketrepreneur]

Pat,

In addition to Kuiper and Starlink, there's also OneWeb and Telesat doing their own broadband megaconstellations. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out, and if the financial markets will stay hot, frothy, and stupid long enough for more than one of these to make it all the way to market. I think things are different than the late 90s (when Teledesic first proposed a broadband megaconstellation that would "darken the sky with satellites"), but the question is how different. A lot depends on when this bubble that Obama and Trump have blown finally pops. If it lasts another 2-3yrs, we'll likely see at least 2-3 of these make it to operations before the bottom falls out. But if things sour in the next year or so, there's a non-zero chance that none of them will make it all the way to market.

Fingers crossed.

~Jon

[Stumpy]

The NSA must be very interested in a method to scarf up all these new datastreams.