Amazon's Project Kuiper Strikes Its First Satellite Internet Deal With an Airline

Amazon's Project Kuiper has landed its first airline deal with JetBlue and plans to offer satellite-powered in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2027. The Verge reports: Yesterday, Amazon's Panos Panay showed off a speed test using an "enterprise-grade customer terminal" (aka, dish) to achieve a download speed of just over a gigabit. Fine, but we'll have to wait to see how it performs once individuals using consumer dishes at scale. Amazon says the first customers will start using the service this year, ahead of a broader rollout in 2026.

Project Kuiper-powered Wi-Fi will be available on "select" aircraft initially. Amazon says its satellites will provide lower latency and "more reliable service" for passengers, as they orbit between 367 and 391 miles above Earth -- far closer than the geostationary satellites that orbit around 22,369 miles above the planet. Amazon has also struck a deal with Airbus to build Project Kuiper's satellite internet service into its aircraft.

Latency

[OrangAsm]

What's the latency like? That was the biggest issue I had with satellite internet. I think the theoretical minimum round-trip ping time was around 600ms, but it never was that good... realistic ping times were more like 1.2 - 3s depending on network conditions. Games? VOIP? Video call? forget it. SSH was painful.

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[YCrCb]

I think you are thinking of geo stationary sats. I worked with a sat HD TV link bandwitch was about 6 Megabits per second and it was 400 ms plus. Kuiper like startlink are in LEO. So times are less than 100mS. YMMV

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[beezly]

If Starlink is anything to go by (and Kuiper satellites are at similar altitudes) you’re looking at 25-50ms. My Starlink experience was over 18 months ago and there are are lot more satellites up than there were then so it might be more consistent.

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[AmiMoJo]

It depends on how much contention there is on the satellite your terminal is talking to, and how much RF interference there is. These services use time division multiplexing, so you have to wait for a slot before sending or receiving data. The more demand for slots from other users, the longer your wait, and the more random jitter between packets arriving.

It also looks like Starlink does does some packet prioritization, so ICMP ping packets go through first, but real data has much worse latency. I imagine A

Re: Latency

[ArmoredDragon]

It's not per-satellite, it's per-cell.

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[quenda]

Traditional comm's satellites are in geo-synchronous orbit, which means they orbit at the same speed the earth turns. So you can point a dish antenna at them and it stays fixed in place. But that is *very* high orbit.

Starlink and Kuiper are low orbit, so low lag. But it means you need a smart antenna array, to follow them across the sky, and switch between them. Cellphones can talk to them with a regular antenna, but only low bandwidth.

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[DrXym]

These low earth orbit satellites have very low latency. Probably no different from what you'd get from a terrestrial system. The bigger issue is contention - the more people under the footprint of a single satellite, the slower your speeds will be. Service could start out with brilliant rates and then slowly suck over time as more people start using it.

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[mjwx]

What's the latency like? That was the biggest issue I had with satellite internet. I think the theoretical minimum round-trip ping time was around 600ms, but it never was that good... realistic ping times were more like 1.2 - 3s depending on network conditions. Games? VOIP? Video call? forget it. SSH was painful.

On an aircraft latency is going to be the least of your problems. Congestion is more likely to be an issue. A Boeing 787-8, smallest of the Squeezeliners, has a typical seating of 242 on the rare occasion the airline sticks to the 32" seat pitch in economy, the 1 class configuration is 359. So even 1/3 of 250 odd people using the internet is going to saturate that link. Hence airlines that already offer inflight WiFi already limit it, no voice calls, no video, SSH probably wouldn't work. Pretty much just ba

How much is that "speed" in apples?

[ArsenneLupin]

or in any other unit fitting speed or bandwidth?

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[OrangAsm]

Libraries of congress per nanosecond is fun.

Enshittification in 3... 2...

[flashpoint31415]

If Amazon's other product offerings are any guide (e.g. Echo, FireTV, Fire Tablet), I would expect them to redirect traffic directly to their website with obtrusive advertising while you are a captive audience on the aircraft. "I'm sorry, there is a TWO PURCHASE MINIMUM to continue to use this internet connection."

Now that I think about it through a cynical lens, it is the perfect business model: they're getting licensing money from JetBlue and AirBus, and then they get the coercive purchases from the airli

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[Pascoea]

I do kinda miss "Sky Mall"

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[jacks smirking reven]

I mean that's how it already works now. With AA it's either "pay $8-14" or watch an ad for 20 minutes of free time. Oh the ad server may or may not work so good luck.

JetBlue to their credit does offer free internet access so I am hoping maybe most of the airlines will go that route, that the potential profits from selling service is worth less than the overall improved customer experience that free internet access would provide, especially as more and more airlines are stripping the LCD displays out.