Amazon takes one small step for satellite connectivity

Amazon has submitted its application to the FCC to deliver home broadband services to rural communities in the US through its Kuiper Systems satellite programme.

In a filing with the FCC, Kuiper Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, plans to deliver high-speed, low-latency broadband services to consumers, businesses, and other customers worldwide through a constellation of 3,236 satellites in 98 orbital planes at altitudes of 590 km, 610 km, and 630 km, us Ka-band radio frequencies.

Aside from providing broadband solutions to rural and hard-to-reach communities, the plan is also to enable MNOs to expand wireless services to unserved and underserved mobile customers and provide high-throughput mobile broadband connectivity services for aircraft, maritime vessels, and land vehicles.

While Amazon has plugged its bank account to entice the FCC, it is also leaning on its existing operations as a means to support the new venture. It has stated it has the ‘global terrestrial networking and compute infrastructure required for the Kuiper System’, as well as the ‘customer operations capabilities’ acquired through its various businesses from eCommerce through to AWS cloud computing.

It’s a comprehensive filing from Amazon, and we suspect it peak some interest at the offices of the FCC.

“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,” the application states.

“According to the FCC’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Report, 21.3 million Americans lack access to fixed terrestrial broadband with benchmark download and upload speeds of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps, and more than 33 million Americans do not have access to mobile LTE broadband speeds of 10 Mbps/3 Mbps. Amazon will help close this digital divide by offering fixed broadband communications services to rural and hard-to-reach areas.”

Once the ugly duckling of the communications family, the satellite segment has been given a new lease of life in recent months. Amazon and Tesla are two companies which are attracting the lion’s share of headlines, but there are several firms, such as OneWeb, Telesat and LeoSat Technologies, with grand plans to launch constellations over the next few years to bridge the connectivity gap.

And it isn’t just satellites which might be filling the skies over the next few years. Google’s Loon is another business attempting to break the mould when it comes to connectivity. Last week, Google finally received the relevant permissions to start testing its balloons to deliver connectivity, with commercial services set to launch over the coming months.

Even internally the telco industry is seeking to disrupt the status quo. Fixed wireless access for broadband solutions are becoming increasingly popular as a means to deliver connectivity over ‘the last mile’. AT&T and Verizon are charging ahead in the US, with companies like Starry challenging, while numerous telcos have announced their own ambitions in Europe, including Vodafone and Three in the UK.

Although there are still ambitions to deliver the full-fibre dream, the commercial realities seem to be getting in the way. It is incredibly expensive to deliver home broadband through wires, especially when you go to regions such as the US, where the geography is so diverse and vast, or Africa, where ARPU remains a problem in justifying ROI. The digital divide is present everywhere, to varying extremes, and it seems the traditional approach to home broadband is not going to be able to meet demands.

That said, some territories are even out of the reach of Bezos. In the application, Amazon has requested a waiver from delivering connectivity to Alaska, as it would be too far north for the constellation. It perhaps undermines the validation Amazon has put forward, delivering connectivity where it is too difficult for others, though whether this has any material impact remains to be seen.

Although progress is clearly being made here, what is absent from the application are any details on the design of the satellites or timetables for launches. Should permission be granted, we suspect Amazon would move forward very quickly however, Bezos is a space-buff after all.

Interestingly enough, Bezos’ side venture Blue Origin could be in the running to launch the satellites, though Amazon would have to be very careful here. As a publicly-traded company, this could be viewed as a conflict of interest.

The OTTs have constantly been a threat to the delivery of connectivity, a segment owned by the telcos to date, and have faced numerous complications is staging a coup (see Google Fiber). Using satellites might just be a way to carve a niche. It will be an expensive job, but these are companies which have the funds, the desire and the culture to make such a dream a reality.