They were first registered in October last year and renew on an annual basis for $150 a pop. Starlink, which has six ground stations at Puwera, Te Hana, Clevedon, Hinds, Cromwell, and Awarua, also pays a token $150 per year per licence.
While low-Earth orbit satellites provide customers with broadband access nearly anywhere, they need ground stations to connect them to the internet as a whole.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment records show two Amazon licences around the Warkworth Satellite Earth Station north of Auckland. It is operated by Spark and Space Operations NZ (owned by the Southland Regional Development Agency), which took over the Auckland University of Technology’s radio telescope last year.
The location for six licenses is listed as “Warkworth Amazon Gateway” and “Warkworth Teleport” – a possible reference to Spark’s wholesale satellite broadband operation, Teleport Hosting Services. Both locations are off Satellite Station Road.
It’s not clear if Amazon Kuiper NZ is only using the long-established satellite station at Warkworth as a temporary base until it builds its own dishes elsewhere (as Starlink has done), or if it’s bought land adjacent to the Warkworth station or another option.
A spokeswoman for the Overseas Investment Office said the identity of the party who had leased the land to Amazon Kuiper NZ had been redacted under Section 9(2)(b)(ii) of the Official Information Act 1982 (which states release of the information “would be likely unreasonably to prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the subject of the information”).
She did offer that Amazon Kuiper NZ did not have any more land applications in front of the agency at this time.
Starlink, which began its first commercial operations in 2019, now has more than 6000 satellites in low-Earth orbit.
Connection requires a dish (from $599) on the roof of your home or business (or your camper van or boat), with monthly data plans starting at $79.
Spark, One NZ and 2degrees are all resellers of the pricier Starlink Business. In a separate development, One NZ is set to offer text-via-satellite from a standard smartphone by year’s end, using the “celltower in the sky” smarts of a new generation of larger Starlink satellites.
Amazon’s Project Kuiper aims to put more than 3000 satellites into orbit.
Two prototypes were launched in October last year on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. ULA is a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.
Project Kuiper could not be immediately reached for comment, but Space News reports the Amazon unit hopes to launch its first production satellites in the final quarter of this year, with its first commercial broadband service in 2025.
A “multi-billion” launch programme has seen Amazon buy eight Atlas Vs from ULA, and 38 of its next-generation Vulcan Centaur rockets, for deploying the constellation in low Earth orbit, plus 18 Ariane 6 rockets from Arianespace, up to 27 New Glenn missions from Blue Origin – owned by Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos - and three SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets slated to launch from mid-2025.
Ariane 6 and New Glenn are still awaiting their maiden flights.
Rocket Lab earlier said it has signed a US$143 million ($228m) subcontract MDA Space for design, manufacturing and operations work on Globalstar’s next generation of low-Earth orbiting satellites, set to launch next year. It’s the Kiwi-American firm’s second-largest single contract.
In late 2022, Apple said it had invested US$450m in the Louisiana-based GlobalStar via its Advanced Manufacturing Fund. The tech giant is using GlobalStar’s existing network for its SOS via Satellite feature, which two trampers stranded in Arthur’s Pass used to summon emergency services last September.
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.
