Amazon LEO's Business Strategy Versus Starlink's Residential Focus

Amazon plans to dominate the business market for LEO connectivity. Its Ultra phase array antenna in satellite field tests with corporate beta users has simultaneously clocked 1.2 gigabits down and 400 megabits up. Indeed, LEO management has publicly stated that its download performance will be 2x better than Starlink's and enjoy 6x to 8x better uplink performance. The uplink edge is essential to Amazon's strategy. While residential Internet traffic is lopsided with downloads predominating, business and network applications are often symmetric or nearly. Even Starlink's 400 megabit service requires several hours to upload large gigabyte files. 

 Amazon is targeting mobile operators and IoT aggregation hubs for its 1 gigabit service. Mobile towers are often long distances from the nearest fibre optic network in many countries. Amazon will carry the local traffic back to the mobile operator's POP or data center. Indeed, Amazon's service is ideal for remote data centers in places like Africa as a primary connection or in more developed countries as backup. The gigabit service has a natural synergy with prefabricated modular data centers in landlocked African countries where fibre links are unavailable or incredibly expensive (which is the norm). Industrious African telecom entrepreneurs can create the first data center in their country combining modular units with LEO service.

 So I expect Amazon to be the invisible partner of every ISP, data center, mobile provider or telecommunications carrier that has customers that are particularly vulnerable to Starlink competition either in residential Internet or mobile phone service. It will also become a partner to the US military as the US government frowns on single vendor monopolies. I expect the initial rollout will target business entities such as mobile companies, remote offices and commercial sites, ISPs, logistics, and science research facilities in the Arctic. 

 One sign that Amazon is quite serious is that its antenna uses an Amazon designed silicon chip and also incorporates a propriety signal processing algorithm designed to maximize radio frequency throughput. It includes a sophisticated management operating system that allows one click connection to an Amazon cloud. Note that Amazon's service offers not only Layer 3, but also Layer 2 point-to-point service. The ability to provide point-to-point Ethernet is really what sophisticated organizations want.

For more details, click here: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/amazon-leo/amazon-leo-satellite-internet-ultra-pro.

Screenshot of Amazon Ultra Antenna Electronics


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