One of the most exciting things happening in cord cutting right now is the growing number of options for home internet. Now Amazon’s head of its new internet service Naveen Kachroo in an interview with Forbes, broke the news of when you can expect to sign up for Amazon’s new Home Internet service.
In October of 2022, Amazon announced their Project Kuiper would launch more than 3,000 satellites into low-earth orbit to offer this home internet service. To do this, Amazon has announced plans to build the required satellites in Kirkland, Washington.
To do this, Amazon has secured a deal with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin to launch these satellites into space starting later this year. With this deal, Amazon hopes to launch multiple prototypes into space to test the system before mass production starts.
Amazon is facing a deadline as the FCC has given it until mid-2026 to have 1,600 satellites in space or face losing its FCC approval for the project.
Now Naveen Kachroo announced that Amazon will start selling home internet service in 2025. A handful of testers will be getting the service earlier, though. Recently it was announced that beta testing of the service will start next year in 2024 with commercial customers, according to Amazon’s CEO.
Naveen Kachroo also said that Amazon’s main goal here is to have Amazon’s Home Internet service as a low cost option. “Low cost and the ability to scale are at the core. We are a business and so we have to make money, but we’re patient. We are willing to play the long game.”
What speeds should you expect?
Here are the three internet speed options Amazon Home Internet will offer:
Standard This standard version will come with an 11″ square antenna that will offer speeds up to 400 Mbps down. This will be perfect for homes.
Pro Version If you need a lot of speed, Amazon has an 11″ by 30″ pro antenna that can offer speeds up to 1 Gbps. This will be perfect for companies or large households.
Portable Version Now if speed is not that important to you, but you want something you can easily travel with, you may want Amazon’s ultra-portable version that is just 7″ square and offers speeds up to 100 Mbps.
Here is what Amazon’s CEO said in the letter to shareholders about its new home internet service earlier this year:
Kuiper is another example of Amazon innovating for customers over the long term in an area where there’s high customer need. Our vision for Kuiper is to create a low-Earth orbit satellite system to deliver high-quality broadband internet service to places around the world that don’t currently have it. There are hundreds of millions of households and businesses who don’t have reliable access to the internet. Imagine what they’ll be able to do with reliable connectivity, from people taking online education courses, using financial services, starting their own businesses, doing their shopping, enjoying entertainment, to businesses and governments improving their coverage, efficiency, and operations. Kuiper will deliver not only accessibility, but affordability. Our teams have developed low-cost antennas (i.e. customer terminals) that will lower the barriers to access. We recently unveiled the new terminals that will communicate with the satellites passing overhead, and we expect to be able to produce our standard residential version for less than $400 each. They’re small: 11 inches square, 1 inch thick, and weigh less than 5 pounds without their mounting bracket, but they deliver speeds up to 400 megabits per second. And they’re powered by Amazon-designed baseband chips. We’re preparing to launch two prototype satellites to test the entire end-to-end communications network this year, and plan to be in beta with commercial customers in 2024. The customer reaction to what we’ve shared thus far about Kuiper has been very positive, and we believe Kuiper represents a very large potential opportunity for Amazon. It also shares several similarities to AWS in that it’s capital intensive at the start, but has a large prospective consumer, enterprise, and government customer base, significant revenue and operating profit potential, and relatively few companies with the technical and inventive aptitude, as well as the investment hypothesis to go after it.
Amazon is slowly rolling out details of its new internet service. Hopefully, soon we will see Amazon start launching satellites in mass to offer one more internet option for cord cutters.