Amazon’s unproven Challenge Kuiper satellites shall be put to work subsequent 12 months, supplying web entry to rural Australians. The retail large announced an agreement with Australia’s state-owned Nationwide Broadband Community Firm (NBN Co) on Tuesday to offer satellite tv for pc web to greater than 300,000 eligible prospects throughout the nation by mid-2026.
“Australia’s huge geography presents distinctive connectivity challenges that conventional infrastructure usually can’t overcome,” Joe Lathan, Challenge Kuiper’s supervisor for Australia and New Zealand, mentioned within the press launch. “This partnership with NBN Co represents our dedication to fixing these challenges by way of innovation and collaboration.”
That is the primary main partnership introduced for Challenge Kuiper, Amazon’s try and tackle SpaceX’s Starlink service. Whereas the latter already has greater than 8,000 satellites in orbit, offering service to greater than 100 international locations, Challenge Kuiper is barely out of the gate by comparability, with 78 satellites launched up to now. Amazon’s subsequent launch is scheduled for August seventh because it continues to construct a deliberate constellation of three,236 satellites.
The NBN Co partnership is probably not the primary Challenge Kuiper service to launch, nonetheless. Amazon’s web site says it expects to start “delivering service to customers in late 2025,” although the corporate hasn’t but revealed the place, or how a lot the service and client {hardware} will value.