A rooftop satellite dish for Amazon's upcoming Project Kuiper service. Photo / Amazon
Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network has proved wildly popular in rural New Zealand (where it had racked up 37,000 customers by mid last year) and anywhere around the world where gaps in internet coverage need to be filled.
But it faces budding competition from the Amazon-owned Project Kuiper, which has begun to put its first satellites into orbit.
Overnight, Amazon announced that Project Kuiper will go live across the Tasman in “the middle of 2026″ in a partnership with the Government-owned National Broadband Network (NBN) that will offer satellite broadband to 300,000 customers in rural Australia.
The Aussie push is Project Kuiper’s first commercial partnership. Separately, Amazon has said that Kuiper will begin its first commercial service by the end of this year.
Amazon poached NBN executive Joe Lathan to head its recently minted Project Kuiper Australia-New Zealand unit.
The tech giant has been advertising for Project Kuiper Australia-New Zealand staff. It’s also appointed a consumer partnerships head (Julie Tan) and a head of strategy (David Ibanez).
In July last year, the Overseas Investment Office granted Amazon permission to buy a 500sqm block of land, at an undisclosed location, for a New Zealand Project Kuiper ground station.
And Government Radio Spectrum Management records show that Amazon Kuiper NZ (fully owned by Amazon in the United States), has secured eight satellite transmission licences for New Zealand.
Lathan had no comment on the timing of the first Project Kuiper service for NZ, but the Herald understands he’ll have staff on the ground here in September for briefings; the Government is still weighing options for expanding rural broadband, from subsidised DIY satellite dish installs to an expansion of Chorus UFB fibre.
Starlink, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has more than 8000 satellites in low Earth orbit.
Project Kuiper has so far launched 78 satelllites across three launches since April (two on rockets from the United Launch Alliance, one on a SpaceX Falcon 9). Another 27 are due to be launched on a ULA rocket later this week.
More than 80 Project Kuiper launches are lined up, also involving rockets from Arianespace and the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin (Rocket Lab is not in the frame for launches, but could be after its larger Neutron rocket goes into service. The Kiwi-American firm is also said to be making reaction wheels - components for controlling satellites - for Project Kuiper in its Auckland factory, but won’t comment).
Project Kuiper’s ultimate goal is a constellation of 3200 satellites.
The Amazon service will deliver broadband to a satellite dish on the roof of a home in a similar manner to Starlink’s mainstay service.
Starlink is now also offering satellite-to-mobile phone service to various telco partners, to help them fill gaps in cellualr networks - including One NZ (and from the New Year, Spark, according to pervasive industry rumours. Spark confirms it has signed a deal with a US provider, but will not name it).
Amazon has been in discussions with a number of telcos including Vodafone in Europe, about a direct-to-mobile service for Project Kuiper, but has yet to firm up plans on that front.
Meanwhile, NZ Rugby has announced a “from the scrum to the cloud” partnership with Amazon-owned AWS.
Tech Insider wondered if it could be something of a chess move, with the next round of rugby rights still hanging in the balance.
Was NZ Rugby sending a message to Sky TV by getting into bed with the owner of Prime Video and the biggest streaming infrastructure operator on the planet? Maybe that it suddenly had the wherewithal to dramatically expand NZR+ and stream more live games?
Nope. An NZR spokeswoman said: “This has nothing to do with the broadcast deal.”
Apparently, it’s about making NZR’s existing website and streaming service work better, and Amazon crunching data about player performance.
NZ Rugby says AWS will support it in two key areas:
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.