Blue Origin's Satellite Internet Network TeraWave Will Move Data At 6 Tbps

Blue Origin has unveiled an enterprise-focused satellite internet network called TeraWave, which promises up to 6 Tbps speeds via a mixed low- and medium-Earth orbit constellation. TechCrunch reports: The TeraWave constellation will use a mix of 5,280 satellites in low-Earth orbit and 128 in medium-Earth orbit, and Blue Origin plans to deploy the first ones in late 2027. It's not immediately clear how long Blue Origin expects it will take to build out the whole network. The low-Earth orbit satellites Blue Origin is building will use RF connectivity and have a max data transfer speed of 144 Gbps, while the medium-Earth variety will use an optical link that can achieve the much higher 6 Tbps speed. For reference, SpaceX's Starlink currently maxes out at 400 Mbps -- though it plans to launch upgraded satellites that will offer 1 Gbps data transfer in the future. "We identified an unmet need with customers who were seeking enterprise-grade internet access with higher speeds, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy, and rapid scalability for their networks. TeraWave solves for these problems," Blue Origin said in a statement.

Blue Origin's Satellite Internet Network TeraWave

[pygalge]

I have to wonder how those clients who need "enterprise-grade internet access with higher speeds, symmetrical upload/download speeds" will deal with the latencies and security overhead of satellite links.

Re:Blue Origin's Satellite Internet Network TeraWa

[Charlotte]

That's why they have 2 tiers, I guess?

Lower latency for most applications, higher throughput for bulk. Syncing datacenters usually isn't time critical and land lines with these characteristics are hideously expensive.

I have a friend in shipping, and they use a really slow legacy satellite network which makes connectivity slow and expensive. Ships nowadays are in constant contact with the shore, and ships are just one use case. There's also the military, airplanes, deserts, dictatorships, etc. Starlink proves there is a use for this.

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[AmiMoJo]

For commercial users they will want to reserve a certain amount of bandwidth or guarantee a certain maximum latency, so it seems like they have a decent reason to exist along side other constellations.

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[lucifuge31337]

Syncing datacenters usually isn't time critical and land lines with these characteristics are hideously expensive.

It's not? I can also imagine some scenarios that fit this assertion, but even more that do not. Also, hideously expensive compared to WHAT? Surely not compared to launching satellites. Fiber is cheap in commercial terms. Yes, it's expensive for an individual, not a business who owns multiple datacenters. It's getting cheaper all the time as we cram more and more data over the same physical fiber with increasingly better optics.

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[korgitser]

They will deal with it as they have done so far: if the service is better than the ones that came before, they sign up.

Wall-E

[Petersko]

That shot of the probe transport leaving earth is starting to seem prophetic.

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[Pascoea]

Well, we're currently on act 2 of Idiocracy, so Wall-E seems like a good one to queue up next.

Only 5 years away

[RogueWarrior65]

The company has yet to get on a regular schedule for launches let alone build one for massive satellite deployment.

Good for them

[marcle]

Here's hoping SpaceX gets some serious competition.

This is insane

[whitroth]

Right now, there are over 15,000 satellites in orbit. This one company wants more than 5,000 more... and they are all disposable. They're going to be superseded in two or three years, and then they'll go down (slowly) into the atmosphere, endangering aircraft at the least, and then they'll want to replace them.

Have I missed anything?

All this, as opposed to putting up large stations, and sending missions to the stations to attach or replace outdated ones? Which would give us *maybe* 24 stations, instead of t

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[PleaseThink]

> Have I missed anything?

Yes, burning the satellites up on reentry damages the ozone layer and has other negative effects on the atmosphere. There was a group studying that. DOGE killed them and any path towards regulating or redesigning satellites to avoid causing that type of damage.

Satellite mesh was almost thing 20 years ago

[kriston]

Satellite mesh was almost thing 20 years ago with Spaceway by Hughes. It was supposed to provide connectivity between satellites in the Ka-band but it was never turned on.

How?

[SuperDre]

By the time BO has their TeraWave satellite network up and running, SpaceX will have had their upgrades too and have matched their speed or faster. Looking at how 'fast' it takes for amazon to get their swarm of satellites up there, I doubt BO will have their satellites up there any time soon.