Amazon To Offer Broadband Access From Orbit With 3,236-Satellite 'Project Kuiper' Constellation (geekwire.com)

Amazon is joining the race to provide broadband internet access around the globe via thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, newly uncovered filings show. From a report: The effort, code-named Project Kuiper, follows up on last September's mysterious reports that Amazon was planning a "big, audacious space project" involving satellites and space-based systems. The Seattle-based company is likely to spend billions of dollars on the project, and could conceivably reap billions of dollars in revenue once the satellites go into commercial service. It'll take years to bring the big, audacious project to fruition, however, and Amazon could face fierce competition from SpaceX, OneWeb and other high-profile players.

Project Kuiper's first public step took the form of three sets of filings made with the International Telecommunications Union last month by the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Washington, D.C.-based Kuiper Systems LLC. The ITU oversees global telecom satellite operations and eventually will have to sign off on Kuiper's constellation. The filings lay out a plan to put 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit -- including 784 satellites at an altitude of 367 miles (590 kilometers); 1,296 satellites at a height of 379 miles (610 kilometers); and 1,156 satellites in 391-mile (630-kilometer) orbits. In response to GeekWire's inquiries, Amazon confirmed that Kuiper Systems is actually one of its projects.

Comments

WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

As long as this product competes fairly with all other products and said company doesn't use it to unfairly advertise to or unduly influence any segment of society to their own products, then I'm all for this. Otherwise this will just turn into the same situation of Spotify versus Apple, where Spotify is automatically at a competitive disadvantage, but now it's because they can't afford their own satellites.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Dunbal]

competes fairly with all other products

This is Amazon we're talking about.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Well if that happens then good luck to anyone ever wanting to compete on a level playing field again. The companies that are setting up satellites will gain a permanent global market dominance instantly.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Dunbal]

I doubt it because I can imagine exactly what is driving them to set up these networks - inserting their own ad service into your streams. I am sure a not insignificant amount of people are going to wish to continue paying for ad-free service.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Mark my words, this will create the corporate world order that everyone fears.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Joce640k]

Are you sure it's not all those people living in rural areas who can't get broadband at any price? And the people who like to go out in the woods where there's no phone coverage?

Having said that:
a) How "broad" can it be from low-earth orbit? Iridium's best systems are still only at dial-up modem speeds.
b) I'm sure Amazon will lobby against net neutrality so they can prioritize traffic from their own services and slow down Netflix etc.
c) Launching 3236 new satellites into low-earth-orbits? What could possibly go wrong?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Like I said, i'm all for that. But not at the cost of handing corporations the keys to global domination.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Joce640k]

Ships at sea, too. I imagine that's a very lucrative market if somebody can fill it.

Cruise ships will probably cough up a fortune for decent Internet.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[ebh]

Bandwidth is easy. Latency is hard.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[omnichad]

Bandwidth is hard too. Have you seen the caps on most satellite service? What's hard to tell is whether the lower-hanging satellites in this constellation are purely to drive down latency or if it's to increase the bandwidth they can serve. These are low - the latency wouldn't be much worse than transcontinental or transatlantic is now.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[greythax]

c) Launching 3236 new satellites into low-earth-orbits? What could possibly go wrong?

Let's see... LEO is anything up to 1200 miles above the surface... so 4pi(1200^2)/3236.... Dude, that is like one small satellite every 5,591 miles. And that is lowballing because the 1200 mi is not being calculated from the center of the earth (i'm lazy). Literally the distance between a buoy in the atlantic and one in the pacific. I think it will be just fine.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[drinkypoo]

Are you sure it's not all those people living in rural areas who can't get broadband at any price?

They can already get satellite internet. AFAIK nobody meets the FCC definition of broadband, though. Exede (Viasat) gives 20MB/sec, I don't think any services are faster than that. They throttle video, but downloads are plenty fast. There's about a second of latency, though, which is a drag. LEO will help there. Right now LEO doesn't help much because the existing networks are low-bandwidth, but once we have high-bandwidth sats in LEO, we'll have more usable latencies on satellite networks.

Networks like these are what will finally get decent internet access to RVs. None of the GEO providers support RV users right now. You can get a self-aiming dish for watching TV, but not for internet access. I want the exact opposite :)

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[lgw]

Well if that happens then good luck to anyone ever wanting to compete on a level playing field again. The companies that are setting up satellites will gain a permanent global market dominance instantly.

Permanent? No. Utilities are capital-intensive. No one gets to play unless they have billions to build infrastructure. It's not like Amazon will be shooting down competitors sats to maintain the high ground.

If Bezos wants to build a rocket company and use it to build a utility - more power to him. Musk is doing the same. More power to them. No one has a monopoly on launching sats to orbit, and unlike the "last mile problem", there's no natural monopoly here.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[MooseTick]

"Bandwidth is easy. Latency is hard."

Is latency a real problem for anyone except a subset of gamers? Web surfing, email, netflix, VOIP, etc should all work fine. Sure, a ping will be 638 ms, compared to 30 ms, but that is still just a half a second. If you can get high speed, almost no one would notice the difference.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope India have enough rockets.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[omnichad]

VoIP doesn't work "fine" at 1s+ latency. The amount of time wasted accidentally talking over each other is almost equal to the length of the call.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Agreed, any wait at all for the response to come makes voip unworkable. If you think about it, usually "turns" in a regular conversation are microseconds apart.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

1) Not everyone can afford satellites, and
2) By the time a few companies build theirs, there will be no room for others.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[MooseTick]

I'd agree. Luckily, the average satellite latency is about half that. And if it isn't found to be usable in that capacity, it could cut tons of terrestrial bandwidth usage so most traffic moves via satellite and leave lots of room for the few applications that need to move fast. Image the speed we could get back if all that Youtube, Netflix, Pandora, Facebook, Roku traffic were moved via satellite.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Cruise ships will cough up what their passengers are willing to cough up. They're not going to spend more money unless their passengers do or unless it helps them get more passengers and it turns a profit.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[omnichad]

Maybe theoretically/sometimes. In the real world, peak business hours especially, congestion increases that latency. This new constellation is LEO - so you will have latency that competes with traditional broadband.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[lgw]

1) Not everyone can afford satellites, and

And what's your point? Seriously? You don't become a regional power company without billions to spend. You don't become a major telecom player without billions to spend. That's the nature of utilities.

The problem with current ISPs is the last mile monopoly. This approach bypasses that.

2) By the time a few companies build theirs, there will be no room for others.

Space is big. There's limited room in GEO because it's effectively 1-diminsional, and so it's heavily controlled by treaties. Anywhere else though there's lots of room. Lower orbits are more crowded, relatively speaking, but they also decay a lot faster (drag increases exponentially as you get close), and sats only have so much station-keeping fuel, so orbit height is a bit of a trade-off an there's no special prime real-estate (other than GEO).

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

How many regional power companies sell you appliances and give you a better deal on electricity if you buy their products? Oh that's right, they're not allowed to do that.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[jimbo]

I imagine Finnish and Japanese people would cope somewhat whereas Brazilians or Greeks would lose their minds /s

In any case you're right. It's good that LEO latency should be 30-50ms, in contrast to a GEO latency of 600-800ms.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[lgw]

That's because regional power companies are (usually) monopolies. How many times are you going to ignore that there's no natural monopoly here?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Big Bipper]

A ping of 638 ms is what you would expect from a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. These will only be around 380 miles high. Think about that when pinging from one coast to another.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

With a web page doing 20+ connections to retrieve scripts, libraries, pictures etc. you're multiplying that latency problem, add packet loss for good measure.
This means a web page will load if the conditions are good or will load eventually but it might stall and fail a lot of times. Sometimes you'll have the text article with missing CSS and cruft (yay!), sometimes you will have random crap but not your article and sometimes you will have a blank page.
This is what I witnessed with 1 Mbps wifi service that got high latency and jitter (and even degrees of loss) when everyone was pounding the 2.4GHz band (like at 6 PM, 7 PM etc.)

Unsurprisingly you may have a decent time reading wikipedia or "old school" web forums. Slashdot depends, javascript-loaded comments had issues. Half comments truncated or missing and have to reload everything.
Youtube? May work fine at 3 AM or 4 AM. But really the solution was to use youtube-dl in the command line, which gets you a 100% working 144p, 240p or 360p once it's done and was able to resume maybe. Works (and doesn't on sites not supported by youtube-dl) if you're in a very small minority who uses networked programs on the command line.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Wouldn't it make most of those connections at once, there by taking the latency hit once for page in theory?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

A small conglomerate that has satellites will be every close to a monopoly.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

For example, the oil industry isn't a monopoly but how many gas stations do you see charging 5 cents less per gallon than everyone else?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it's not all those people living in rural areas who can't get broadband at any price? And the people who like to go out in the woods where there's no phone coverage?

Having said that:
a) How "broad" can it be from low-earth orbit? Iridium's best systems are still only at dial-up modem speeds.

6 year old MEO constellation from O3B could do gigabit, to a 3 meter dish, 100mbit to a small patch antenna.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[kenh]

Right - Amazon is going to deploy 3K satellites and offer them to all competitors at cost... Are you confusing Amazon with a non-profit organization?

Amazon, if funding this project 100% privately, is within it's rights to refuse to carry any service it chooses to, because it's theirs, they own it, and that's it. I don't understand hobbling a successful company willing to undertake such a massive and risky venture, so that it's competitors can benefit from their investment and risk.

 

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[kenh]

I'm sure Amazon will lobby against net neutrality so they can prioritize traffic from their own services and slow down Netflix etc.

As a private network, wholly-owned by Amazon, why would they need to worry about "net neutrality"? Why would they carry "Netflix" on their private network?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fustakrakich]

Being a service provision, it will have to be subject to all the net neutrality rules we should be demanding from the other ISPs. I hope this will be the case

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[kenh]

1) Not everyone can afford satellites, and

So what? Is everyone supposed to be able to afford Satellites?

2) By the time a few companies build theirs, there will be no room for others.

A few companies have built "theirs", and still we keep throwing up more each year - satellites aren't permanent, they fall out of orbit, are taken out of orbit, etc...

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[kenh]

Here in Texas I see easily a dozen "competitors" that want me to "buy" my electricity from them, all with various prices and incentives to compel me to choose them over my current provider. I have plenty of competition, and I see no need to run parallel power infrastructures for each provider that wants to enter the market.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[kenh]

I see it all the time - in most (if not all) states, gas stations are only allowed to change their prices once in a 24 hour period - the wise retailer waits until his neighbor gas station sets their price first, THEN sets their own price to compete. Sometimes station owners want to maximize profits, sometimes they want to move product, sometimes they want to starve their competitor of sales.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[nospam007]

"As long as this product competes fairly with all other products and said company doesn't use it to unfairly advertise to or unduly influence any segment of society to their own products,"

Do you mean that the baker that comes to our village each day on his cost with his truck to sell his products should be forced to sell other bakers' bread?
Isn't that a bit UnAmerican?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[lgw]

Don't taunt all the people who are not blessed to live in Texas. Also, shhh, do you want more Californians to come?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[lgw]

A small conglomerate that has satellites will be every close to a monopoly.

Bezos and Musk have both announced plans. If they make any money, others will be sure to follow. The point is: anyone who can raise the capital can enter this market.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[r2kordmaa]

As answer to 1) pretty broad actually, a single sat can provide many gbps of data streams. But you divide it between number of users in the range of that sat, so ymmv. In the middle of a metropolis you get squat, in the middle of Pacific you'll get very decent connectivity.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[MooseTick]

Yes. Latency is not a factor for every download. Its not like one file downloads, then you have new latency, then another file, then more latency, etc. Once the initilal push/pull starts, its just up to the bandwidth.

I'm also not sure why he says there will be more packet loss either.

"This means a web page will load if the conditions are good or will load eventually but it might stall and fail a lot of times."

This can be an issue with any connection type.

And why will youtube work "fine at 3 AM or 4 AM" and not the rest of the day? Is this due to bandwidth issues, interference from the Sun, or some other reason?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[CohibaVancouver]

The companies that are setting up satellites will gain a permanent global market dominance instantly.

Unlikely, due to pesky physics.

Never say never, I suppose, but in towns and cities there's no way a space-based solution will ever be able to compete with the cost-of-delivery of a high-bandwidth and low-latency terrestrial fiber-based network.

Rural is a different story - Grandpa's farm in Kansas might benefit - But even there a 5G wireless terrestrial solution will always win from a cost-of-operation perspective. You don't need to launch a rocket to put up a tower a few miles from Grandpa.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

You understand that Netflix uses AWS for, like, all its infrastructure, and is thus one of Amazon's major customers, right?

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

Your threshold of pain for VoIP is about 400 ms. Beyond that, it noticeably ceases to be a natural conversation. You routinely experience latency approaching this when talking on a cell phone.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Amazon doesn't own space though,

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

No, I mean the vehicle companies shouldn't use vehicles at cost to deliver baked bread while the baker has to pay full retail for his.

Re: WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

Iâ(TM)m not sure the latency will be all that great.

Radio transmits at the speed of light, with 391 being the distance to the satellite in orbit and having to double it I still get a 1ms tranmission time (barely) for the up and down. Even if that routes through multiple satellites it could still be (potentially) faster than anything available for most customers.

Depending on how the routing is done it could be a net positive since tranmisstion would be to the mesh satellite closest to the destination service and not the myriad of hops that currently exist because thatâ(TM)s where the wire in the ground is buried (I realize itâ(TM)s not wire) which isnâ(TM)t a straight line.

This is not equivalent to satellite internet from Dish or their competitors, and I would hesitate to compare them in any way.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah, this is the company that refused to sell the $35 Chromecast because they found it to be too much of a threat to their crappy service. Who knows what they'll block on their network.

I'll get Starlink, thanks.

Re: WHat will the projust be like

[buchanmilne]

"Bandwidth is easy. Latency is hard."

Sure, bandwidth is easy when using UDP. When using TCP with high latency, your throughput is limited more by the latency than the bandwidth (1xmax_packet_size/RTT) due to having to ack every packet before the next will be sent.

Re: WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

I go where I go for gas. 16 gallon gas tank, 5c difference is 80c. omg!
yawn.

Re: WHat will the projust be like

[Anonymous Coward]

theres "rural", say 20 miles away from city/metro areas, and rural - the Dakotas, almost all of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Alaska, etc.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[synaptic]

Best case latency:

367 miles / c = 0.00197 seconds = 1.97ms
379 miles / c = 0.002035 seconds = 2.035ms
391 miles / c = 0.002099 seconds = 2.099ms

That's one way though, between station and sat.

Because these are LEO sats though, they're moving fast and you're talking to different birds all the time. Regionally, this is should very fast, we're talking 5-10ms RTT.

Longer routes will likely be passed up to the 379-391mi sats and backhauled to the lower sats at the destination. How much latency that will induce is a good question, what's the path length, switching cost, and hop count? This will be one hell of an interesting networking problem to optimize. 3236 nodes moving at, what 56000-58000mph.

But the status quo of east to west latency terrestrially is somewhere in the neighborhood of 66-85ms. If they can beat that, this thing is going to win the Internet. It also enables the legions of robots and IOT devices that are coming online.

It's a brave new world.

Re: WHat will the projust be like

[CohibaVancouver]

and rural - the Dakotas, almost all of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Alaska, etc.

While installing an 4G terrestrial network ain't cheap, it's still orders-of-magnitude cheaper than operating a satellite network. In the flat parts of those states you only need a tower every 20 miles. 4G will give you 50 mbps - We have 25 mbps at our house over copper and we can still stream on three iPads easily.

Certainly areas like Alaska will benefit from satellite Anonymous Coward, but I remain highly skeptical that it will ever compete against earth-based systems.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[Joce640k]

Cruise ships will cough up what their passengers are willing to cough up.

Cruise ships need to compete with other cruise ships. If one of them offers "Free WiFi" then people will choose it.

Given their "floating vegas" mentality they can probably even charge people for it? $10 extra for "unlimited WiFi"? That's an easy sell.

Re:WHat will the projust be like

[fluffernutter]

Have you ever taken a cruise? More like $200 for WiFi.

Source article URL...

[daveschroeder]

...not included in post at time of posting this comment:

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/...

Censorship and content blocking

[sinij]

Are they going to comply with specific government requirements for content censorship? That is, if someone in China going to get satellite internet, are Amazon going to roll over and censor it?

So far track record for big tech on this is abysmal, even "Do no evil" Google working on censored search engine for China. I don't see Amazon behaving any differently.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[olsmeister]

If they don't have any physical presence there, why would they?

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[Dunbal]

Because they might find some of their satellites falling out of the sky until they do?

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[arbiter1]

If they want to sell service legally then yes they will have follow the law's of said country.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

how is said govt going to block access to a sat network? A MR Burns Sun Blocker but for the whole sky?

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[Joce640k]

Are they going to comply with specific government requirements for content censorship? That is, if someone in China going to get satellite internet, are Amazon going to roll over and censor it?

Presumably you'll need a special Amazon antenna and decoding box to use it. They can be controlled.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[EndlessNameless]

how is said govt going to block access to a sat network?

Internet access requires two-way comms. They should be capable of locating any terrestrial transmitter that can reach orbital receivers.

Even focused directional antennae are detectable when you can put planes or satellites overhead.

There is no need for electronic disruption. They can simply find and arrest the users.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[omnichad]

China is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, but deciding whether taking down a satellite is a violation of that treaty would be a long-fought battle.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

The satellites provide a connection between the end user, and a ground station. A ground station is connected into the internet backbone (high speed wired internet). The local government will have no problem controlling this connection, just like the backbone connection of any other ISP.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[91degrees]

Google have never had a "do no evil" policy. They had "Don't be evil" as an unofficial motto, but this is subtly different.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

From the sound of it, they will have more satellites than China has missiles.

Re:Censorship and content blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

They will have to publicly shoot a lot of missiles into space to take down the internet. Even then, it will take a couple of reusable rockets loaded with hundreds of the satellites to bring back online.
They may attempt to jam the bandwidth the internet satellites are based on though. Satellite signal is very weak and quite easy to jam out.

As if Amazon doesn't create enough junk....

[haruchai]

now they'll be significantly adding to the junk in space

Or, maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

for phone intercept. Blackmail. Extortion. Other good stuff.

Light pollution

[magarity]

Time to move all serious astronomy to the far side of the moon.

Re:Light pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the dark side of the moon. The DARK SIDE of the Moon. Didn't you see that Transformers movie? Sheesh! //jk

Re:Light pollution

[lgw]

Time to move all serious astronomy to the far side of the moon.

True story. Also "home, home on LaGrange, where it's dark and the telescopes play"

Global Agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be possible to get some sort of global agreement that in order to be allowed to do this they have to agree to let other companies to lease their network (GNVO) at some competitive rate? Getting the LEOs littered/staked out by whichever companies are the early leaders in this is probably going to make it that much more difficult for subsequent companies to enter the market.

I do like the prospects of getting some competition to the local ISPs going though.

Re: Global Agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Same arguments made against AT&T for the Ma Bell.

Re:Global Agreement

[Dunbal]

On the other hand - unlike municipal and other laws that prevent you from stringing your own cable on telephone poles or under roads: absolutely nothing is stopping you from putting up your own satellites.

Not about internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

3236 satellites? That is a military tactical action. This is about preventing launches beyond LEO. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Re:Not about internet.

[leonbev]

Ya know, this does kinda sound like the evil plot from a James Bond movie. I can't remember which one, though.

Re:Not about internet.

[omnichad]

The surface area covered by low Earth orbit is 10s of millions of square kilometers. I don't think about 3,000 satellites would be all that crowded if moving in a stable path.

Re:Not about internet.

[Guspaz]

How, exactly? If you put 3,236 satellites into a 300km orbit and spread them evenly over the surface of the planet, you'll still only have one satellite per 172,816 square kilometers. The chances of collision for something passing through to a higher orbit would be very small, particularly if you timed the launch to reduce the chances further.

Re:Not about internet.

[Joce640k]

Getting them all up there with no mistakes/debris might be a challenge though.

Failure rate for that many satellites will be high, too. They'll need constant replacement/de-orbiting.

Re:Not about internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Add one or two Indian (or other) missiles, chain reaction, and what do they call that, there's a name for the resulting catastrophe...

Re:Not about internet.

[Dutch Gun]

Because when people try to visualize the problem of space debris, they often look at a very small picture or animation of earth, forgetting that the globe represents an entire planet. Yes, it's a problem, but people are terrible about conceptualizing anything at that scale.

Re: Not about internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Elon musks sets, or Zuck or any future competitors?

Re:Not about internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking exactly this when I read the summary. Why didn't they just name it the Kessler project? All these different companies wanting to do exactly the same thing is bound to eventually lead to very un-good things.

Re:Not about internet.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Failure rate for that many satellites will be high, too. They'll need constant replacement/de-orbiting.

Fortunately they get free Prime shipping.

Re:Not about internet.

[kenh]

Failure rate for that many satellites will be high, too.

No, the failure rate won't go up, the number of failures may go up, but the rate won't likely change.

They'll need constant replacement/de-orbiting.

OK, so what? Roads need constant repair, so do train tracks, as well as airplanes and almost everything else? The upside is they'll likely find cost savings in volume production.

Re:Not about internet.

[rdg55]

"Failure rate for that many satellites will be high, too." The _rate_ will be the rate regardless of number of satellites, no? I'm sure they hadn't thought of replacement issue until some random Slashdot reader alerted them. Is the still a thing?

630 km?

[PPH]

They already drop their packages from too high on my porch.

Prime Video for Rural Users?

[omnichad]

All it would take is caching hardware, and Prime customers with Amazon satellite service could get timed pre-downloads of popular Prime shows. Without affecting their cap if it's part of a multicast. I'm surprised that nobody is piggybacking on data satellite off-peak hours already, so maybe they haven't thought of it yet.

Re:Prime Video for Rural Users?

[kenh]

If we imagine this is to distribute Amazon Prime content, all you need is a "decoder" box that caches the most popular content locally, downloaded in the background as it is broadcast on a regular schedule. Unique, one-off content can be streamed in real-time, but the vast majority of people want to watch the new Transformer movie, not the latest eco-warrior documentary - the former can be predictively cached, the latter can be streamed on demand.

The great wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Amazon offer traffic to China, Russia, possibly the UK and other countries that want to create their own walled off internet? Or will all the sats only be above the US?

Re:The great wall

[Joce640k]

I imagine the antennas/decoders will be fancy. Easy for governments to control.

More space garbage

[racermd]

Look, I'm in favor of LEO satellite internet as much as anyone else but I have VERY serious reservations about Amazon operating it in any capacity. They've shown, time and again, that they're not willing to do the Right Thing (tm) if it means any kind of hit to their bottom line. Going further, they seem quite intent on weaseling their way into our lives and using data about us all as a competitive advantage, both to their direct competition as well as to ourselves.

And, last I checked, this is at least the second proposal that's offering to launch a constellation of LEO satellites to provide internet services. Didn't SpaceX propose exactly the same service no more than a few months ago? If Amazon manages to do this alongside SpaceX, that's TWO separate and distinct constellations of satellites in low-Earth orbit to contend with. The complications of getting ONE constellation in place without interference are quite high, let alone two. Plus, as more and more nations flex their satellite-hitting technology for military purposes, it can only lead to trouble with regards to dangerous space debris.

Let's nationalize - no, GLOBALIZE this project so that a single constellation of satellites can serve multiple providers. That way, if China wants to censor content, that provider can do that for their territory. Heck, it wouldn't be that difficult to geo-lock signals to prevent, say, a North American provider out of Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. But - one of the advantages of a global constellation of internet-providing satellites is that you could, in theory, get your internet subscription from your home territory and travel literally anywhere int he world and still get access.

Regardless - this seems very much like a "Me too!" move from Bezos to counter Musk. They seem to be fighting over how much control one hyper-wealthy billionaire can have over the rest of us plebes. And I'm already tired of it.

Re:More space garbage

[fluffernutter]

Back when they made laws that TV networks couldn't sell products themselves, what happened to all that? It seems this is a more extreme case of that. Companies that sell products launching their own satellites? Why did we create those laws for the networks in the first place if we're just going to throw any semblance of fair competition out the window and create a new corporate world order now?

Re:More space garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

So do something about it.

Re:More space garbage

[omnichad]

This is a market that has plenty of room for me too. Even if you're talking about a total capacity of a few Tb/s for one constellation, that isn't enough to not allow competition.

Re:More space garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's one global EvilCorp Inc. controlling all the satellites that doesn't seem that good either.

A good outcome is if your hardware (phone, laptop, boat, router...) is able to connect to three or four different constellations of satellites, you may then have a way around finding yourself on a blacklist, or content blocking, or technical issues, or other issues. This is what we have already with navigation systems or earthly 2G/3G/4G.

Regardless - this seems very much like a "Me too!" move from Bezos to counter Musk. They seem to be fighting over how much control one hyper-wealthy billionaire can have over the rest of us plebes. And I'm already tired of it.

Oviously. Bill Gates was here before them with the Internet satellites idea, but that went nowhere, as well as ground breaking nukular reactors (that didn't break any ground) and other grand standing like ending the world's water and sanitation problems or educating everyone etc.
Now, rockets and satellites have made progress and that's easier to make rockets than fix the world's war and disease and so on, so they have a rockets pissing contest.

It might be a simple matter of fiscal optimization as well.

Re:More space garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait you're advocating for _regulation_? Regulations are evil and ultra liberalism is the answer to everything. If you want regulations then you're literally Hitler, want to throw immigrants to the sea and you are responsible for Brexit.

Re:More space garbage

[EnsilZah]

Didn't SpaceX propose exactly the same service no more than a few months ago?

Much more than a few months ago, more like five years ago, they're actually launching the first batch of them next month.

Jeff Bezos is Lex Luthor.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just more proof that Bezos is a super-villian. Who else would create a satellite network to "provide internet access" but "The greatest criminal mind of our time""?

Re:Jeff Bezos is Lex Luthor.

[Megane]

Hmm, Lex Luthor vs Tony Stark? This could be a great movie. I better get some popcorn.

He created the lesser light to govern the night

[Anonymous Coward]

For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.

Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
It has blood on it!
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
Losing my religion
Sun researchers find strange eclipse reading

Next total solar eclipse: July 2 2019, Argentina/Chile/South Pacific

Laws [Re:Global Agreement]

[XXongo]

On the other hand - unlike municipal and other laws that prevent you from stringing your own cable on telephone poles or under roads: absolutely nothing is stopping you from putting up your own satellites.

Actually, no, there are laws saying that you can't put up your own satellites without permission from your government. Even if you don't launch them from your own country. https://www.technologyreview.c...

In the US, you need FCC permission to operate, and FAA permission to launch.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/regulations/

Re:Laws [Re:Global Agreement]

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no, there are laws saying that you can't put up your own satellites without permission from your government. Even if you don't launch them from your own country. https://www.technologyreview.c...

In the US, you need FCC permission to operate, and FAA permission to launch.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/regulations/

There are also international treaties governing the use of space. By agreement, they take precedence over a government's laws if the government signs the treaty.

For example, geosynchronous orbit is a limited resource. Governments need to agree on how to share it.

Re:Laws [Re:Global Agreement]

[fluffernutter]

Clearly if Amazon and Facebook can do it, they have to let everyone who wants to for the same purpose. Eventually every app will have it's own set of hundreds of satellites.

Next 50 years?

[fluffernutter]

If over the next 50 years there are 50 companies that can afford satellites, will we have the room to put their in space and compete on an even footing?

Where Will They Get The Rockets?

[Zorro]

Blue Origin?

Has yet to reach orbit even one time.

Re:Where Will They Get The Rockets?

[r2kordmaa]

If you look at it a bit more deeply, then you'll see it's only a matter of time until they'll get there. In fact I wouldn't be surprised at all if New Glenn launches exactly on schedule in 2021.

Lag?

[Anonymous Coward]

The speed of light from geostationary orbit to Earth is 119 ms, so time two (up and down) that is 440ms or almost a 1/2 second. Wouldn't that be hard to play streaming games with that sort of lag?

Re:Lag?

[RoccamOccam]

These are much lower orbits (not geostationary).

Re:Lag?

[omnichad]

This is why you need so many satellites in a constellation for LEO. They are not going to be geostationary. There are already satellite constellations up there with terrible lag and only modestly high bandwidth (with caps).

Re:Lag?

[sh00z]

Yeah, easy calculation. c=3E08m/sec. If alttitude is 300km, that's 3E05m. t(one-way)= 1E-03, 1 millisecond.

Re:Lag?

[Anonymous Coward]

The filings lay out a plan to put 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit — including 784 satellites at an altitude of 367 miles (590 kilometers); 1,296 satellites at a height of 379 miles (610 kilometers); and 1,156 satellites in 391-mile (630-kilometer) orbits.

So approx. 2 or 4 ms (2x) lag (speed of light only - not including overhead). Not bad.

Re:Lag?

[kenh]

The speed of light from geostationary orbit to Earth is 119 ms, so time two (up and down) that is 440ms or almost a 1/2 second.

Check your math.

If a one-way trip is 119 ms, a round-trip would be 238 ms, not 440 ms.

Re:Lag?

[Megane]

And there he is! There's always that one guy in every article about broadband satellite constellations who doesn't understand that these aren't at geosynchronous altitude.

This is capitalism. The are forced to.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have agreed.

But I fail to see a single way, how anyone could fulfill the demand of everlasting profit growth in a world where everybody is trying to outright ruin and replace you (=competition), and any rules (like anti-monopoly or consumer protection laws) is frowned upon.

I'm not saying any of this is right. It's legalized crime, and nothing else.

But go ahead and try to name me a single way to not act like that and survive.

Re: This is capitalism. The are forced to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, forcing everyone to work for free is clearly a better solution than incentives for work, or larger incentives for innovative and efficient production.

There's no way that a system which rewards need instead of ability would ever hurt anyone, or not collapse spectacularly, killing several million people in the process.

Re: This is capitalism. The are forced to.

[fluffernutter]

Why do you think we're suggesting that we throw those things away? Even under programs like UBI you still earn more if you work, and even more still if you innovate.

Ground based network

[Midnight Thunder]

Starting to wonder whether an improved ground based communication network may be called for as a backup plan? Or maybe forcing companies to cohost on satellites?

With the amount of satellites being put up, we are rushing to make the Kessler Syndrome a reality. So much of what we take for granted has some dependency on satellites, so if shit happens up there we a screwed.

Re: Ground based network

[Anonymous Coward]

"forcing companies..."

Can you fascist fucks please just kill yourselves?

Other people are not your playthings. We are not your slaves to command. Fuck off.

Re:Ground based network

[Anonymous Coward]

Kessler syndrome is not a problem. we have lasers. these things are so low that they will burn up without regular station keeping.

Re: Ground based network

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you fascist fucks please just kill yourselves?

Other people are not your playthings. We are not your slaves to command. Fuck off.

If you persist in shitting in the commons, we will kill you. We're sick of your shit. Fuck off.

Latency?

[Anonymous Coward]

How will this affect my fortnite K/D ratio?

Space junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of it.

Space Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when Amazon shoots down Musk's or Walmart's satellites?

Governments are bad enough, but when corporations take over it will get a lot worse.

Re:Space Wars

[leonbev]

Well... that's what we need Space Force for, obviously. We need those Big, Beautiful space drones with their Big, Beautiful lasers protecting the Walmart satellites from the Chinese and Amazon.

And physics laws...

[LordHighExecutioner]

...will soon cut off satellite broadband access to the whole world for a very long time. Just wait for the first collision among Amazon, SpaceX & co. satellites.

Just what we need

[cmaurand]

3263 more pieces of space junk in orbit

Apparently trusted by the competition

[John.Banister]

It was interesting to me reading that Blue Origin has contracts with Telesat and OneWeb to launch satellites for their competing broadband products. That makes me think of Amazon being paid to do the distribution for companies who sell the same products sold by Amazon.

Re:Apparently trusted by the competition

[mentil]

Interestingly, OneWeb has bad blood with SpaceX and refuses to use their rockets to get their own satellites up. I wonder if something similar might happen now with Amazon.

Re:Apparently trusted by the competition

[Anonymous Coward]

To the extent that you're a customer, Amazon has a reputation for trying hard to make you happy. I think Musk has a harder time resisting sharing his opinions about people, whether they're customers or not.

3,236 satellites ought to be enough for anybody

[MooseTick]

I'm ok with this as long as they don't do more than 3236. Because we all know, 3,236 satellites ought to be enough for anybody.

Kessler Syndrome?

[pr0t0]

I think there are at least four distinct large constellations planned. I have mixed feelings. Competition = good, right? I don't think a Kessler Syndrome is likely, but it's likelihood increases with every single thing we put in orbit.

SpaceX Starlink is roughly 12000 satellites.
Amazon Kuiper is 3200 satellites
Boeing 3000 satellites
OneWeb 2000 satellites

So roughly 20,000 new satellites. That's seems like pretty crowded sky. However, I just did some napkin math. With Earth's radius at 3950 miles and the satellites operating at a maximum altitude of 850 miles, 20k is roughly 1 satellite for every 145k square miles if distributed perfectly evenly at that altitude. So maybe not so bad?

Re:Kessler Syndrome?

[fluffernutter]

Amazon launching satellites into space is about eliminating competition, not increasing it. They're not doing it because it will allow more people to compete with them.

Re:Kessler Syndrome?

[r2kordmaa]

Keep in mind that this is before any one of these constellations is online, the moment first one shows sign of actual success you'll have everyone and their dog at it. The only question being, who can launch most satellites? It has been a long dream to do this in space sectors, but has so far been considered not viable from business perspective.

As for Kessler, it's not really a problem between functional satellites, you are not going to get two functional satellites collide if even one can maneuver. The problems are the ones that are going to fail and stick around up there for long term, incapable of maneuvering or determining their own orbit accurately. A working satellite can be monitored much more accurately than a dead one so the risk of colliding with anything is smaller.

It's inevitable that some satellites will fail before they can de-orbit themselves and it will be necessary to go and remove them before too many pile up. Luckily, that is something that can be done, it's only a question of money. Launch costs primarily. But as these constellations must continuously launch a bunch of replacement satellites anyway, they can also launch a few housekeeping satellites as needed.

Re:Kessler Syndrome?

[Anonymous Coward]

"distributed perfectly evenly"

I'm pretty sure there will be higher concentrations above areas of higher population density.

Re:Kessler Syndrome?

[mesterha]

Not for long. They move.

How will they press the Reset button?

[Rick Schumann]

When someone hacks their satellite system (which is more-or-less inevitable, given the shitty state of IT security these days) and takes control of it, locking Amazon out of it, how will they press the Reset button and fix the problem? Is Bezos planning on having his own private space fleet to go up and run antimalware scans on them? </sarcasm>

Re:How will they press the Reset button?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ok, Microsoft is making Windows Defender cross-platform.

Re:How will they press the Reset button?

[Joe_Dragon]

GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
  [SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

Re:How will they press the Reset button?

[kenh]

Is this a problem now, "given the shitty state of IT security these days"? No.

Re:How will they press the Reset button?

[Rick Schumann]

How is it not a problem? When some hacker or state-sponsored cyberwarfare group hijacks your satellite and you can't even access it from the ground anymore, what do you do? Write it off? Get India to blow it up for you?

Always an altruistic premise: "give all internet"

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol... we all know this is for surveillance. Amazon loves the NSA/CIA and the NSA/CIA love Amazon.

Same with Facebook trying to launch satellites under the same premise.

The world's most evil companies tricking you into thinking they are "helping humanity" hahahahahaaha

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks

Or they can work with dish / directv to push movis

[Joe_Dragon]

Or they can work with dish / directv to push movies / shows to the local DVR disk (wait dish and directv do that now)

Re:Or they can work with dish / directv to push mo

[omnichad]

Yes, Satellite TV operators already do this. I'm talking specifically about Satellite Internet providers with no live TV services.

Strawman arguments is all you got?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I never said anyone should force anyone to work for free. (In don't even know any way one could arrive there from what I said. The opposite is closer.)

2. You are disqualified.
Please learn to make valid arguments. Thank you for playing.

More pollution...

[Anonymous Coward]

stop polluting Earth orbit! Too much is too much. Satellites detract from the night sky and can alter bird migration. More and more light pollution from all sources. Now not even the deepest, darkest desert will be safe! Seeing the ISS once in awhile is fun. Iridium flares once in awhile are OK. But these things are becoming like nests of hornets.

What about the International Space Station?

[shayd2]

I don't see any comments about the ISS orbit. It is between 403 and 408 miles. With 1,156 satellites in 391 mile orbit they are close enough to interfere. It's only a 3% difference.

The launch accuracy will have to be nearly perfect

Re:What about the International Space Station?

[Anonymous Coward]

400km.