Amazon is planning nationwide broadband – with both home and mobile service

Amazon seeks state permission to launch 3,236 broadband satellites that will cover almost every US and much of the rest of the world

Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems filed its application with the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday last week and said it should cover the entire US outside of most of Alaska.

"The Kuiper system covers the area between 56 ° N and 56 ° S latitudes," said Amazon's subsidiary FCC. "Therefore, customers throughout the [the] continental United States, Hawaii and all US territories will have access to Kuiper System services, including customers in many other countries within the coverage area. The Kuiper system will not provide the FSS [fixed-satellite service] in the majority of Alaska , but because the state's high latitude is beyond the scope. "

Amazon's plan for an almost global broadband system was previously disclosed in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) filing, which we reported in April. It is not clear when Amazon will launch this service, but FCC rules require the launch of 50% of the satellites within six years of authorization and all of them within nine years unless a waiver is given.

Although the network covers the entire continent of the United States, it may be most popular in areas lacking cable or fiber access. Amazon said in April that Kuiper is focusing on unnoticed and subservient parts of the world. "This is a long-term project designed to serve tens of millions of people lacking basic access to broadband Internet," said Amazon, as it intends to offer broadband services through partnerships with other companies.

Amazon's satellite plan is not just for housing and business ̵[ads1]1; it's also for mobile access. In its new submission, Amazon said the network would be available to mobile operators, increasing the possibility for small rural operators to purchase Amazon bandwidth to increase coverage in areas with poor mobile access.

"The Kuiper system will help build gaps in coverage by supplementing the efforts of terrestrial fixed and mobile operators and reaching some of the most remote and hard-to-reach areas, where it is often geographically difficult or cost-effective for terrestrial service providers to operate. Today, the online resource added that it will sell backhaul services to ISPs, Amazon's plans are detailed in a legal narrative and technical appendix filed with the FCC.

It is not clear whether Amazon will sell broadband Direct to Consumers But whether it's a mix of direct to consumer and wholesale (or wholesale only), Amazon said it will build customer terminals that provide Ethernet connectivity in homes and businesses.

Former SpaceX exec heads the Amazon project [19659011] Kuiper is wholly owned by Amazon, and its president is Rajeev Badyal, a former SpaceX vice president, reportedly fired because the SpaceX con chief executive Elon Musk was dissatisfied with the company's satellite broadband progress.

Amazon says it intends to operate the satellites at altitudes of 590km, 610km and 630km, which puts the system in the orbit of the ground. SpaceX already has FCC permission to distribute nearly 12,000 low-earth satellites. The FCC also has previously approved requests from OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat to offer broadband in the United States from smaller numbers of Earth observation satellites.

Low-earth satellites should offer far better latency than today's satellite systems, potentially making them a viable substitute for wired broadband networks. While fast wired networks are not available in many rural parts of America, the Amazon FCC told it "will help close this digital divide by providing fixed broadband communications services to rural and hard-to-reach areas." Amazon said the Kuiper system "will also allow mobile network operators to expand wireless services to unnoticed and subconscious mobile customers and provide high-level mobile broadband connection services for aircraft, maritime vessels and land vehicles."

Amazon's application did not specify prices or exact speeds in megabits or gigabits per second. But the document promised "high-speed, low-latency" broadband. Amazon wrote:

The Kuiper System's orbital architecture is designed to maximize the capacity and coverage of customers at full constellation performance. Using overlapping height shelves with different inclinations, the constellation designed minimizes the total number of satellites required to spread coverage evenly across geographic latitudes and provide link diversity, even when a satellite experiences an inline interference event with other systems.

First launch will get service up and running

Amazon said it will launch the 3236 satellites in five phases and launch commercial operations after a first phase launch of 578 satellites.

"During deployment, full-time commissioning services will initially be available between 39 ° N -56 ° N and 39 ° S-56 ° S latitudes," Amazon said. "Additional deployments will extend full-time commercial service against the equator until the Kuiper system has full service coverage throughout the 56 ° N-56 ° S latitude."

Amazon said it will archive separate FCC applications to service ground stations and customer terminals to provide home and business service.

"Gateway ground stations will be connected to high-speed fiber connections to global Internet exchange points and point-to-presence locations to exchange traffic and reduce network jumps and latencies," says Amazon.

Number of gateway ground stations "will be approximately equal to the number of active satellites serving US territory, "said Amazon. Amazon said it will install more ground stations" in regions where higher rainfall is present "to account for signal loss, as well as along the coast" to support offshore customers. "

Each Kuiper satellite will be able to access two gateway earth stations as part of Amazon's plan to minimize downtime. "Customers will always see a continuous connection" over a standard Ethernet interface in their homes and will be "unaware of the switch. of satellites, gateways, or routes through the Kuiper System network, "said Amazon.

Amazon must convince the FCC that it has a sufficient plan to avoid track waste. satellites go out of service. Amazon said it would take less than a year to "actively dismantle and deorbit" every retired satellite so they can burn up in the atmosphere. Satellites will also be "deactivated automatically if all communications to ground stations stop in a predetermined waiting time." In these cases, a "passive deorbit" based on atmospheric drag will take five to seven years, Amazon said.