Amazon has unveiled three receivers that will be used to receive signals from Project Kuiper, the Space Internet initiative that promises to bring fast and affordable broadband to consumers, businesses, government agencies or other organizations that live or operate in locations without unreliable connections or signals.

Project Kuiper is the name of a satellite internet solution being developed by Amazon. Although it lags behind SpaceX’s Starlink, which is at the forefront of this development, the e-commerce giant and the more than $10 billion it is investing will be a big competition for Elon Musk’s program in the future.

Compared to Starlink, which has its own launcher, Amazon and other companies that claim to provide new satellite Internet solutions do not. So far, Amazon has contracted for 92 heavy lift launches from Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, which should provide enough capacity to put the spacecraft into low Earth orbit. The company designed 3,236 satellites.

Project Kuiper receivers

In addition to satellites in orbit, special receivers, which Amazon just introduced, will be required at the customer level. We won’t need the antennas of the NASA telescope to pick up the signal because the structures are relatively small, especially those designed for homes.

The first will be the model “ultra compact”, the most affordable and simplest, 18 cm thick and weighing less than half a kilogram. Amazon says it will provide speeds of up to 100 Mbps, which should be fast enough for standard web browsing.

Model “Standard” It will be the most popular choice for homes, offices and small businesses. It has a square design of 28 cm and a weight of 2.27 kg, it offers a performance of up to 400 Mbps.

There will also be a model “for” 76 x 48 cm, which will reach terabit transmissions and will be primarily intended for oil platforms, ocean-going ships, or other similar cases of use.

Amazon has yet to define the monthly cost of each of the services it will offer, or exactly how much the antennas will cost, other than that a standard receiver will cost under $400. The company refers to the cost of production, not the final price to the end customer.

To say that the first two launches of the Kuiper project (still in the prototype stage) are scheduled for this month of May, with the full launch of the satellite starting in the first half of 2024. The company promises connection speeds higher than those from Starlink (up to 1 Tbps) and be able to serve a number of potential customers between 300 and 400 million.

Amazon isn’t just looking for broadband subscribers. As with its own-brand hardware, which sells for near-cost, the company hopes to collect more customers who use its services, place more orders, watch more Prime Video series or listen to more music.