The waiver "serves the public interest by promoting a second large satellite broadband constellation."
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FCC lifts looming deadline for Amazon Leo satellite broadband constellation
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Seems reasonable given progress to date and (hopefully temporary) lift limitations. Plus it apparently irritates Musk.
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you have to feel bad for kuiper. they've been royally fucked on launch capacity in essentially every conceivable way
on the bright side, something tells me they're getting great deals on block buys from ULA and Blue...
on the bright side, something tells me they're getting great deals on block buys from ULA and Blue...
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I can’t believe there wasn’t more, or actually any, detail about SpaceX going full-court press on the FCC to punish Amazon for failing to meet the milestone.
Like Steve said, seems perfectly reasonable. Rockets are hard. And Starlink is starting to become worrisome as a true pro-consumer service now that it will be propping up many of the other Musk endeavors financially. Something to actually compete against Starlink is starting to become critical.
Like Steve said, seems perfectly reasonable. Rockets are hard. And Starlink is starting to become worrisome as a true pro-consumer service now that it will be propping up many of the other Musk endeavors financially. Something to actually compete against Starlink is starting to become critical.
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CrashingTooFast
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Any rumors about offering (beta?) service to consumers? Seems like 300+ satellites is enough to start getting the bugs out.
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This is a pretty reasonable decision.
The deadlines were set, in the first place, to prevent companies from locking up spectrum and capital with "yeah, were totally gonna build this, for real, trust me bro" and then never executing on it.... which would have stalled other competitors who were actually willing to put in the work.
Since Kuiper / Leo is now very real and has money, factories, and engineers behind it – and is stalled only by the fact that Space Is Hard (tm) therefore schedules always slip to the right – giving them time to make that investment work out is a good plan.
What else could they have done? "Sorry Amazon, we know you spent the money and invented the tech and built the factory, but since there aren't enough good rockets around to fly it before the arbitrary deadline, you'll have to write all that off and get nothing?" That'd be thoroughly illogical, and would have a chilling effect on all kinds of other long term investments.
The deadlines were set, in the first place, to prevent companies from locking up spectrum and capital with "yeah, were totally gonna build this, for real, trust me bro" and then never executing on it.... which would have stalled other competitors who were actually willing to put in the work.
Since Kuiper / Leo is now very real and has money, factories, and engineers behind it – and is stalled only by the fact that Space Is Hard (tm) therefore schedules always slip to the right – giving them time to make that investment work out is a good plan.
What else could they have done? "Sorry Amazon, we know you spent the money and invented the tech and built the factory, but since there aren't enough good rockets around to fly it before the arbitrary deadline, you'll have to write all that off and get nothing?" That'd be thoroughly illogical, and would have a chilling effect on all kinds of other long term investments.
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Time-to-first-customer will be interesting. Still, time-to-general-availability will be a bigger challenge and one that the FCC really wants to see out of the constellation.
What the play would be to bid on spectrum without impacting their already-datacenter-addled cashflow would be interesting. Because gaining a monopoly on D2D orbital spectrum would presumably be the goal.
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Yes, this is one reason why the 1.5T (yes a "T") IPO valuation of Space-X doesn't make sense in the long run, they assume that Space X will keep minting money on Starlink.
The foundation of capitalism rests upon "the invisible hand" that is greed/competition will make others (LEO) move into a market where there is only a monopolist (Starlink). With time, a successful LEO constellation will drive down internet-from-space prices so that Starlink won't be making outrageous profits (they may still be making substantial profits if their Falcon 9 is cheaper than the someday operational New Glenn).
Of course, Starship will reset the game once again and return Starlink to outrageous profitability but (hopefully) this will spur the competition to build their own completely reusable launch vehicles (New Glenn + Stoke?).
As long as there are competitors with the ability to challenge (yes, the huge capital investments) done by Space X, the price will be driven down, benefiting the end user (us). So let's hope that New Glenn is restored to launch and they begin earnestly working on a fully reusable vehicle. Otherwise we might have to go to the Chinese.
The foundation of capitalism rests upon "the invisible hand" that is greed/competition will make others (LEO) move into a market where there is only a monopolist (Starlink). With time, a successful LEO constellation will drive down internet-from-space prices so that Starlink won't be making outrageous profits (they may still be making substantial profits if their Falcon 9 is cheaper than the someday operational New Glenn).
Of course, Starship will reset the game once again and return Starlink to outrageous profitability but (hopefully) this will spur the competition to build their own completely reusable launch vehicles (New Glenn + Stoke?).
As long as there are competitors with the ability to challenge (yes, the huge capital investments) done by Space X, the price will be driven down, benefiting the end user (us). So let's hope that New Glenn is restored to launch and they begin earnestly working on a fully reusable vehicle. Otherwise we might have to go to the Chinese.
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Amazon did it to themselves by not including SpaceX in the initial big order. It took an investor lawsuit to uncover the detail that Amazon's board had spent less than a hour debating the launch contracts and had never even considered using Falcon 9. Thanks to the lawsuit, as well as delays with the other rockets, the company was forced to use Falcon, grudgingly.
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FCC wants more satellites... or, rather, more Federal funds to subsidize billionaire-owned satellite companies. Don't need more satellites. Need more fiber.
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Came here to say this. Break up the telco oligopoly, install municipal fiber everywhere, let ISPs compete to provide best service per $ over the deployed fiber.
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The SpaceX application wasn’t to stop Amazon Leo continuing - it was an argument about the licensing structure for the rest of the constellation. They argued for a restructure of the licensing. Amazon asked for (and got) a waver for the existing licenses.
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Once again - the big market for LEO data isn’t consumers who can’t get fibre. Though the are nice to have.
it’s users (often commercial or military) who can’t use fibre. Or have reason not to use fibre.
For example, a lot of companies have bought expensive, guaranteed service level, Starlink connections. Not to use day to day, but as live backups for connectivity. So if the fibre network they use normally dies, they don’t miss a beat.
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There's no reason to think Starlink won't continue to make oodles of money for SpaceX. The potential market for space-based internet backbones is a much bigger pie than Starlink currently occupies even if you ignore all proposed or imagined expansions of the space economy like orbiting datacenters or factories. They remain firmly capacity constrained in many regions, and even if end-user pricing does come down, they are well along the path toward dropping their deployment costs pretty dramatically.
I pure fucking hate the guy running that company as much as anyone can and believe his wealth is a few orders of magnitude beyond what anyone should ever have, but SpaceX is very well positioned to grow into and beyond that valuation.
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Not entirely wrong, but there is a big need for a second constellation: war. Right now SpaceX/Musk has far too much leverage over the government when it comes to the military applications of Starlink/Starshield. The U.S. desperately needs another option in that field, both for its own operations and for proxy support.
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One thing not mentioned in the article, is that there is a $ penalty for not for launching 50% of their constellation by the end of July. Amazon will have to pay the financial penalty even though the rest of the penalties are no longer in play.
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They lose their surety bond which cannot be greater than $5m. Given that they paid for the most expensive and least reliable launch vehicles I don't see that as being much of a penalty.
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It seems like satellite internet should be run as a utility and heavily controlled, for security and competition reasons. It's not a natural market for capitalist competition, any more than broadband or clean water supply.
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The leverage is that Musk paid a lot of money to Trump's campaign and supports him with his bully pulpit X promoting billionaire fascism here and overseas. If the Congress had a spine, it could dictate any terms it wants, because it's the government.
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I work in the comms sector - personally, I'd love to break the monopoly and drag the US into entertaining more municipal fiber. That said, it simply doesn't cover all use cases (not saying we shouldn't do it - just saying you still need both).
Fiber economics simply won't make sense everywhere, even terrestrial FWA is limited. Not to mention the defense applications, maritime, air, and ultra-long-haul that LEO satellites can offer.
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The article doesn't say much about the cost to Amazon for the different rockets.
A quick search says the F9 lists at ~ $74 million and NG is estimated at $68 to $110 million. But, Amazon's satellite project has a contract for a bulk discount on NG.
So, if it were flying, New Glenn would be the cheaper way for Amazon to get its sats to orbit. If it were flying...
A quick search says the F9 lists at ~ $74 million and NG is estimated at $68 to $110 million. But, Amazon's satellite project has a contract for a bulk discount on NG.
So, if it were flying, New Glenn would be the cheaper way for Amazon to get its sats to orbit. If it were flying...
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On the one hand, absolutely, they aren't responsible for the delays in their launch vehicles.
On the other hand, it really does seem like they weren't ready to start launching their constellation until April 2025 (the second launch, and the first with more than two satellites). Unless they had purchased a lot more F9 launches than they had, they were going to need Ariane, New Glenn, and Vulcan (all very new rockets) launching for them at a cadence of about once a month each to hit 1,600 satellites in 15 months. I'm not sure you can attribute all of the problem to the launch side, with that kind of late start.
That said, they are visibly making efforts towards getting their constellation deployed, so I can see why the FCC doesn't want to cancel their license.
On the other hand, it really does seem like they weren't ready to start launching their constellation until April 2025 (the second launch, and the first with more than two satellites). Unless they had purchased a lot more F9 launches than they had, they were going to need Ariane, New Glenn, and Vulcan (all very new rockets) launching for them at a cadence of about once a month each to hit 1,600 satellites in 15 months. I'm not sure you can attribute all of the problem to the launch side, with that kind of late start.
That said, they are visibly making efforts towards getting their constellation deployed, so I can see why the FCC doesn't want to cancel their license.
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The $68M number is bunk, but there's 1 source reporting a $110M bulk buy price for New Glenn, which would make it cheaper than Falcon 9 on a per-satellite basis.
We also don't know how much Amazon paid specifically for infrastructure investments versus the actual launches. They funded a second VIF and MLP for ULA, with the expectation that the upfront cost would be recouped over many flights (including potentially for later generations of the constellation). They may have done something similar with Blue Origin.
I don't think this decision is as simple as "fly on Falcon 9 and call it a day." SpaceX remains Amazon's primary competitor in this market, and relying exclusively on Falcon 9 would make it much harder for alternative launch providers to remain viable.
If they went down the path of flying exclusively on Falcon 9, they could find themselves in 2030 completely beholden to SpaceX to get their satellites into orbit because no other meaningful alternative exists. Maintaining a diverse launch ecosystem has value beyond the cost or performance of any single rocket, because it provides strategic independence and negotiating leverage.
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I wonder if that 40 billion dollar Melania documentary helped make the the decision easier?
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I still say this is the most ridiculous thing for amazon to be wasting its money on, and seems a pure grift for bezos benefit.
That being said, they definitely should get the extension and I hope they succeed
That being said, they definitely should get the extension and I hope they succeed
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How is it a grift? Amazon is spending tons of money to get this to work and making none, for now.
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But Amazon’s promise to the FCC to launch half the constellation doesn’t care about cost and doesn’t care about independence. They said they would launch half and they failed.
They chose to purchase launches on systems that were not launching and not on the most reliable, most available system. The FCC should grant the extension because no one else is in place to use the frequencies (though it would be funny if Starlink did so) so this is the best bet, but no one should accept their sad excuses.
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That's true but even if it wasn't, Amazon still would have gotten an extension because they are actually launching birds.
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That's not a realistic threat for as long as SpaceX and its key staff are in the United States. The government has near-unlimited power in wartime to take over critical sectors -- either through ownership or directed production or prioritization of government contracts -- via the Defense Production Act of 1950. The government has various police forces and armies to force compliance and can put you in jail or kill you for not complying.
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After the US government handles terrestrial broadband reasonably, maybe then look to fucking Space?
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They entered into a market (being an isp) that gives them no benefits,other than to be a major customer of their former CEO and large shareholder. Being an internet service provider doesn't help them, they have no real expertise, and it is a massive capital outlay...for what?
I know people point to aws, but this has nothing to do with aws. This is more akin to them competing with comcast. Take bezos rocket company out of the picture, and Id bet great money this never even gets considered.
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Makes sense. I think the original deadline was to prevent Amazon from just claiming the bandwidth without using it, with the intent to make sure there is room for other new competitors. There are no other competitors at this time though, and the facts dont justify the concern that Amazon might be sitting on bandwidth to hold it hostage.
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Lost or injured hikers will never have access to municipal fiber.
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True. But that's not an argument against breaking up ISP oligopolies. Nor is that a market that makes much of a dent in recouping satellite costs. But - I'm sure the hikers are glad to see a world where there's a cheaper alternative to sat phones.
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Aka amazon had enough money to pay the bribe to keep them from giving more grift to spacex but Dish network didn't. To claim any notion of protecting competition after gutting Dish Mobile and forcing them back to being an mvno is a complete farce
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LEO Satellite data is a natural non-monopoly
You get world wide coverage with the most basic system. And there are multiple vendors right now.
There is only one mega constellation currently in service, but we are discussing one of the next one. The Chinese are launching as well.
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