(Credit: Amazon)
To beat Starlink, Amazon is promising it can offer gigabit satellite internet speeds, a goal that SpaceX has also long been chasing.
Amazon touted the gigabit promise on Monday as it opened a "preview program" to beta test its upcoming Starlink competitor, Amazon Leo. It's the first time Amazon’s Starlink challenger will serve real people. However, the preview is only open to select enterprise customers, including JetBlue and Hunt Energy Network.
Early test users will receive access to the Leo Ultra, Amazon's most powerful satellite dish. “The full-duplex phased array antenna provides download speeds of up to 1Gbps and upload speeds up to 400Mbps, making it the fastest commercial phased array antenna in production,” Amazon says.
The dish can provide the high download and upload rates simultaneously, the company added in a video. The product looks poised to rival Starlink's $1,999 Performance dish, which debuted earlier this year. It can currently offer speeds at 400Mbps+ and is poised to offer gigabit speeds sometime next year. (Currently, you can only get gigabit Starlink speeds if you use multiple dishes together.)
So, we’ll be curious to see how Amazon's systems perform in the preview program. The company previously mentioned a beta, but delays with its satellite launches left it unclear when the trials might start. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Starlink is already serving over 2 million customers in the US, including businesses, airlines, and naval ships.
Amazon clearly faces an uphill battle against SpaceX, especially when Starlink's constellation already spans over 9,000 satellites. In contrast, Amazon has around 150 in orbit, and likely needs hundreds more before it can offer consistent coverage. Still, the company’s Leo service might offer a competitive alternative to Starlink, which has dealt with network congestion in certain parts of the US as more and more people signed up.
(Credit: Amazon)Amazon's preview program will also offer early test users access to the Leo Pro, the standard satellite dish for Amazon Leo. “We’ll expand the program to more customers as we add coverage and capacity to the network,” the company added. A wider commercial rollout won’t happen until next year, possibly in Q1, according to earlier remarks from an Amazon executive.
Like the Starlink Performance dish, the Amazon Leo Ultra model is built to operate in tough environments, featuring a “weather-resistant design that can withstand high-and low temperatures, precipitation, and strong winds,” the company said.
“The antenna is powered by a custom silicon chip designed by Amazon Leo and incorporates Amazon's proprietary radio frequency (RF) design and signal processing algorithms that maximize throughput while minimizing latency—critical factors for applications like video conferencing, real-time monitoring, and cloud computing,” the e-commerce giant added.
(Credit: Amazon)The company is also preparing a third, more compact dish, meant for portable use. Pricing for Amazon Leo remains unclear at this point.