Around the same time as a big Starlink satellite internet outage this week, it looks like Amazon's competitor network is almost ready to get rolling.
In a company blog post, Amazon detailed its latest developments related to Project Kuiper, a new satellite internet network the company is preparing for launch — literally. The big news here is that Amazon opened a new $140 million facility at the Kennedy Space Center that can handle payload processing for all of its satellite launches. Handling processing internally, rather than farming it out to third-party entities, would theoretically streamline the process of getting these satellites into low Earth orbit, at least according to Amazon.
Amazon sent its first 27 satellites into space back in April, and the company says it has more than 80 additional launches planned for the initial network rollout. The company will be contracting with aerospace companies such as Arianespace, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance (ULA), and SpaceX, which owns Starlink.
Amazon says that most of these launches will take place in Cape Canaveral, Florida, not far from its Kennedy Space Center facility. Before they're sent to the Kennedy Space Center for processing, the satellites are built and tested in a separate facility in Washington state.
The stated goal of Project Kuiper is to deliver affordable satellite internet to people who might need it, which can include those in rural or otherwise isolated communities. According to a company FAQ, service will start rolling out in "late 2025." The FAQ claims that, depending on their service tier, customers can expect anywhere from 100Mbps download speeds all the way up to 1Gbps.
Of course, while Amazon may have dominated the e-commerce world terrestrially, its satellite internet offering has a long way to go to catch up to Starlink, which operates a network of more than 6,700 satellites, the largest satellite constellation in the world.
