Hopefully it’s got enough bandwidth to accommodate all of humanity.
Amazon has elaborated on its new pet project, Project Kuiper, which aims to launch thousands of small satellites to orbit around Earth, in the hopes of providing internet access to every single person on the planet.
Amazon hasn’t released the complete details for the project yet, but it’s been revealed that the tech and e-commerce company will be making use of a total of 3,236 satellites to cover areas around the globe where 95% of the population live. Questions as to how much these satellites will cost and how long it will take to launch them haven’t been answered yet.
“Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world,” said an Amazon spokesperson in an interview with Geekwire. “This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet. We look forward to partnering on this initiative with companies that share this common vision.”
Not everyone is fully optimistic about such plans, however. “Whether Bezos finds partners or is willing to invest the billions of dollars needed to build a system remains to be seen,” says president of satellite consulting firm TMF Associates, Tim Farrar. “Everyone is trying to figure out whether the market is big enough for these projects, and that’s ultimately going to be a bigger constraint than any technical issues.”
