FCC Approves Amazon's Satellite Broadband Plan Over SpaceX's Objections (arstechnica.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon's Kuiper division can start launching satellites to offer broadband service in the US, the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday. The FCC's International Bureau approved Kuiper's orbital debris mitigation plan. This approval was needed to satisfy a condition imposed in 2020 when the Amazon subsidiary received tentative approval for a network of 3,236 satellites in low-Earth orbit. "Our action will allow Kuiper to begin deployment of its constellation in order to bring high-speed broadband connectivity to customers around the world," yesterday's FCC order said.
Amazon's biggest competitor for low-latency satellite broadband will be SpaceX's Starlink service, but Amazon's launch schedule puts it a few years behind SpaceX. The companies have fought each other in FCC proceedings, with Amazon objecting to SpaceX's satellite plans and SpaceX filing objections to Amazon's. In approving Amazon's plan yesterday, the FCC dismissed objections from other satellite providers such as SpaceX and Viasat. As the FCC order notes, SpaceX argued that the commission "should limit Kuiper to deploy only 578 satellites in its 630 kilometer orbital shell, and defer action regarding the remainder of the constellation," in order to "address Kuiper's ability to coexist with other systems in and around its 590 kilometer and 610 kilometer shells, and allow for 'continued monitoring' of deployment." A Space filing last month said, "Granting an initial 578 satellites of Amazon's 3,236-satellite system would offer Amazon a path to begin deploying for 'many months,' while providing the Commission with time and additional data to assess the serious issues raised in this proceeding." [...]
According to the FCC, SpaceX also argued "that Kuiper's satellite disposal strategy will place the Kuiper satellites in an elliptical orbit that, because of the variable effects of atmospheric drag on orbit evolution, will result in large uncertainties in the predicted trajectories of the Kuiper satellites, making it difficult for other operators to assess and mitigate risk." SpaceX contended that "the large covariances involved in the elliptical orbits may therefore pose a risk to SpaceX's satellites operating at the same altitudes during their orbit raising phase of operations." However, Kuiper responded that it "will perform orbit determination using Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements on all Kuiper satellites during the deorbiting process and share high-accuracy location information with operators on a real-time basis." The FCC accepted that plan and imposed it as a condition on the license. SpaceX and Viasat both "raised concerns that Kuiper's satellite designs are not sufficiently finalized to enable review," but Amazon said the design is complete and that it doesn't expect material changes, the FCC order said. Kuiper would have to apply for a license modification if it does make significant changes.
Amazon's biggest competitor for low-latency satellite broadband will be SpaceX's Starlink service, but Amazon's launch schedule puts it a few years behind SpaceX. The companies have fought each other in FCC proceedings, with Amazon objecting to SpaceX's satellite plans and SpaceX filing objections to Amazon's. In approving Amazon's plan yesterday, the FCC dismissed objections from other satellite providers such as SpaceX and Viasat. As the FCC order notes, SpaceX argued that the commission "should limit Kuiper to deploy only 578 satellites in its 630 kilometer orbital shell, and defer action regarding the remainder of the constellation," in order to "address Kuiper's ability to coexist with other systems in and around its 590 kilometer and 610 kilometer shells, and allow for 'continued monitoring' of deployment." A Space filing last month said, "Granting an initial 578 satellites of Amazon's 3,236-satellite system would offer Amazon a path to begin deploying for 'many months,' while providing the Commission with time and additional data to assess the serious issues raised in this proceeding." [...]
According to the FCC, SpaceX also argued "that Kuiper's satellite disposal strategy will place the Kuiper satellites in an elliptical orbit that, because of the variable effects of atmospheric drag on orbit evolution, will result in large uncertainties in the predicted trajectories of the Kuiper satellites, making it difficult for other operators to assess and mitigate risk." SpaceX contended that "the large covariances involved in the elliptical orbits may therefore pose a risk to SpaceX's satellites operating at the same altitudes during their orbit raising phase of operations." However, Kuiper responded that it "will perform orbit determination using Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements on all Kuiper satellites during the deorbiting process and share high-accuracy location information with operators on a real-time basis." The FCC accepted that plan and imposed it as a condition on the license. SpaceX and Viasat both "raised concerns that Kuiper's satellite designs are not sufficiently finalized to enable review," but Amazon said the design is complete and that it doesn't expect material changes, the FCC order said. Kuiper would have to apply for a license modification if it does make significant changes.
Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything that takes Musk down a notch is alright in my book. My father lives up in the boonies and he's noticed that Starlink isn't as fast as it used to be thanks to network congestion (since it basically is the only real option for broadband in his area). Having another choice is always a good thing.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Competition is good - Astronomy (Score:1)
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1. Should Amazon own as much of the Internet as it does?
A list of companies with the financial resources to compete with Starlink would probably be pretty short, and I doubt you'd see a lot of names that give you the warm fuzzies. Really, the way to look at this is that having a monopoly is still a less desirable situation than a megacorp sticking their fingers in yet another pie.
2. Presumably this means a lot of redundant infrastructure. How will this affect astronomy?
I live somewhere with cheap-ish wired broadband, so it would be a bit presumptuous of me to say others don't also deserve high-speed internet access because it might affect folks who w
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How much of the Internet does Amazon own? I assume that you mean the transport infrastructure, not websites (e-commerce) or datacenters (hosting).
I look forward to your declaration that Starlink is an essential facility [wikipedia.org] that must be regulated as open infrastructure subject to price controls.
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Astronomy, and maybe even LEO, was fucked as soon as Musk opened the flood gates. Even if you stop Amazon doing it, many other companies and even some countries like China are planning their own satellite constellations.
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1. Should Amazon own as much of the Internet as it does?
I will flip this back to you: Should Musk have a government granted monopoly on the specific satellite service provided (no other vendor provides satellite services meeting that latency requirement).
Honestly it concerns me less that Amazon is vertically integrated (that can be controlled through antitrust regulation) compared to only having a single suitable vendor.
2. Presumably this means a lot of redundant infrastructure. How will this affect astronomy? Starlink has fucked a lot of that up already.
And I'm internally conflicted because I agree whole heartedly with this. Fire up Stellarium and you can see that at any given time there are alr
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And I'm internally conflicted because I agree whole heartedly with this. Fire up Stellarium and you can see that at any given time there are already multiple satellites zipping across the sky. Honestly Starlink should have been prevented from this nonsense in the first place.
If you need an app to tell you that there are satellites above you rather than your own eyes or telescope, then it's not a problem (for you) and you shouldn't be conflicted.
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Anything that takes Musk down a notch is alright in my book. My father lives up in the boonies and he's noticed that Starlink isn't as fast as it used to be thanks to network congestion (since it basically is the only real option for broadband in his area). Having another choice is always a good thing.
Yes, Musk can be a jerk, but why downplay what SpaceX has done to help your father? Maybe you should be grateful he's not on dialup or geosynchronous satellite?
I agree competition is good and the whole license fight has gone both ways. I just find it annoying when people act like Musk is responsible for everything all Musk attached companies do. He's a jerk.. ignore it.
Why make Amazon more difficult to manage? (Score:2)
Why do that? Does top management want more money? The rich want to be richer?
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Managing Amazon is VERY complicated. Having a satellite division will make Amazon management FAR more complicated.
[citation -- or even logical explanation -- needed]
SpaceX (congrats) Shut Up (Score:2)
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But now they seem to have a problem with data being transmitted and received through their systems.
Unsubstantiated throwaway line detected, citation needed. Can you give examples of these problems that Starlink has? It seems that Facebook and (pre-Musk) Twitter also have a problem with certain data being transmitted and received through their systems. Also, I looked for the word "think" in TFS and TFA, and I have no idea where your quote came from.
TL;DR (Score:3)
SpaceX: Waaaa ... competition.
FCC: Um, Capitalism.
Amazon: Suck it SpaceX.
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SpaceX: Waaaa ... competition.
FCC: Um, Capitalism.
Amazon: Suck it SpaceX.
Competition. To SpaceX. From.... Amazon.
AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAhahahhahahahaha!!! Hahhahahahaha!! hahahahahaha!!!!
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A bit rich of SpaceX to be complaining about people putting up large numbers of satellites with inadequate testing or time to rectify problems.
Just wait until other countries get started too. This is going to end badly.
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Remember when Bezos' Amazon sold books, and people paid for them with Elon's PayPal?
Towards the Kessler syndrome (Score:2)
Multiple megaconstellations are inevitable because the market exists, as evidenced by Starlink. Currently Starlink has a monopoly. Although Amazon may bring some competition, in a duopoly the prices may not differ greatly and the users would still be locked in one vendor. It would be much more beneficial to have a set of satellite networks that can share bandwidth and routing; otherwise, it's just silly. AFAIK Starlink doesn't use typical internet protocols because of the unique setup naturally, but perhaps
Nothing but ISP satellites ... (Score:2)
So how many satellites will all these "Space ISPs" have up there? Seems like the orbital shell of satellites, junk and debris depicted in the movie Wall-E is getting closer to reality.
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Tens of thousands, but to keep latency low they have to be in very low orbits which means the junk de-orbits and burns up in a matter of months.
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SpaceX has started 1 year from end of service life to de-orbit. How much of the satellite burns up, and what effect the gasses it turns into have, remains to be seen.
SpaceX will need to replace 3000-6000 satellites a year, depending how big the constellation gets. Even with 99% of them successfully doing a controlled de-orbit, that's still 30-60 a year falling back to Earth uncontrolled. They will present a hazard for other space vehicles, and require tracking. 99% is SpaceX's stated goal, but it remains to
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Seems like the orbital shell of satellites, junk and debris depicted in the movie Wall-E is getting closer to reality.
Amazon already pretty much is Buy n Large.
Once again Elmo shoots himself in the foot (Score:3)
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They also sent them a bill for them. And used it as an excuse to why they couldn't supply customers. It was all about PR for them.
SpaceX Meet Pot and Kettle (Score:3)
Wait, SpaceX is upset that others satellites may pose a collision risk to theirs? They're the ones who totally ignored and downplayed exactly the same thing when NASA voiced concern about their satellites posing a risk to NASAs and others in orbit. SpaceX wouldn't even move their satellite to avoid a collision.
https://futurism.com/spacex-st... [futurism.com]
Space junk (Score:1)
Musk is upset he can't stop Ukraine (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently, Musk has directed Starlink to prevent the Ukrainian military from using Starlink to guide Ukrainian drones [cnn.com] on reconnaisance and spotting missions. Once Amazon launches its satellite service, Ukraine will be able to use its service instead, and that infuriates Musk. He won't be able to support his Russian pedos like he has been.
As mentioned in the article, Starlink cut off service to Ukraine last summer when the Ukrainian military was making significant gains to retake its country. Conveniently for Russia, the service separation occurred at the most inopportune time, for Ukraine.
But have no fear. Musk can still turn to his Twitter to propogate Russian lies [yahoo.com].
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Musk has directed Starlink to prevent the Ukrainian military from using Starlink to guide Ukrainian drones on reconnaisance and spotting missions. Once Amazon launches its satellite service, Ukraine will be able to use its service instead, and that infuriates Musk.
So you honestly believe that Amazon will have a functioning constellation before the Russia/Ukraine war ends? They don't even have a functioning launch vehicle yet.
Will Blue Origin Provide Launches" (Score:2)
Re: Will Blue Origin Provide Launches" (Score:2)
Of course they will. Blue Origin are dominating Spacex when it comes to spaceflight. Certainly in the all-important SFPD area where Blue Origin score 0.5 with Spacex showing a big fat 0.0
*note for non-rocket-scientists :SFPD is the ISO measurement of Shatners Flown Per Decade.
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Seems SpaceX is asking FCC to block competition (Score:2)
How is this not an attempt to use the FCC to block competition...
How petty.
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Amazon tried to get the FCC to block SpaceX's satellite launches? When? Before this I didn't even know Amazon was in the satellite business ...
When did Amazon try to get the FCC to block SpaceX's launches? Could you list a URL?
tnx!
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Not the OP, but:
https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-co... [geekwire.com]
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/0... [cnbc.com]
wtf (Score:1)