Amazon is hoping to offer a satellite broadband service in the UK within the next two years as it prepares to launch a constellation of spacecraft that could ultimately deliver a mobile signal even to the most remote areas.<\/p>\n
The tech company, founded by Jeff Bezos, said it would seek access to British radio frequencies \u201cover the next one to two years\u201d as it prepares to offer satellite internet, according to a regulatory filing<\/a> first reported by the Sunday Telegraph<\/a>.<\/p>\n Companies are racing to build and launch their own clusters of satellites into low-Earth orbit<\/a>. If a single system launches enough of the smaller satellites less than 1,000km (620 miles) from Earth\u2019s surface it can offer continuous coverage, without the time delays that are unavoidable for geostationary satellites 35,000km away.<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper subsidiary is planning to launch 3,000 small satellites in an attempt to compete directly with Starlink, the satellite internet subsidiary of billionaire Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX<\/a>.<\/p>\n Starlink already allows users to connect to its low-Earth orbit satellites via small terminals<\/a>, and it has a commanding lead in the sector with 6,000 satellites already in space. The company has 4 million customers around the world, and its terminals have been used heavily in the war in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kuiper also plans to use terminals at first, but it has also told the British regulator Ofcom<\/a> that it is exploring options for direct-to-device services, which connect smartphones directly to satellites.<\/p>\n Ofcom said direct-to-device connections could be available to consumers as early as this year, pending a consultation in the next few months.<\/p>\n Direct-to-device services could \u201cpresent a secure communication option for government, defence, and emergency response use cases\u201d, Amazon said in the filings. The company called for Ofcom to grant satellite providers access to radio spectrum \u201cacross all frequencies allocated for terrestrial mobile services and all geographic areas\u201d, as long as they can show they will not interfere with existing mobile networks.<\/p>\n Amazon had initially planned to launch its first commercial satellites by the end of last year, although it has been delayed until early this year despite launching its first prototypes in 2023.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Bezos\u2019s rocket company, Blue Origin, is separately preparing to launch a new reusable rocket, New Glenn, as soon as this week. The rocket, named after the first American to orbit Earth<\/a>, will again compete with SpaceX. Musk\u2019s company\u2019s reusable Falcon 9 has revolutionised the space industry by dramatically lowering costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Amazon was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon is hoping to offer a satellite broadband service in the UK within the next two years as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-198280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}