- Another Bezos company, Blue Origin, is entering the satellite scene
- It’s plotting a satellite network that can provide symmetrical optical connectivity of up to 6 Tbps
- But deployments won’t begin until Q4 2027 and Amazon LEO still hasn’t launched commercial service
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space technology company, plans to enter the satellite connectivity arena with a new constellation targeting data centers, enterprises and government customers.
Dubbed TeraWave, the network will consist of 5,408 low earth orbit (LEO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites and aims to provide high-throughput links and multi-gigabit connections, “particularly in remote, rural, and suburban areas where diverse fiber paths are costly, technically infeasible, or slow to deploy,” said the press release.
To that end, Blue Origin promises some ambitious speeds. The company claims 5,280 LEO satellites will deliver an RF connection of up to 144 Gbps, while the remaining MEO satellites will provide symmetrical optical connectivity up to a whopping 6 Tbps.
That’s a lot in the context of optical satellite technology. Our analyst contacts were wary of Blue Origin's promises.
“Frankly I’m skeptical,” said J.Gold Associates Principal Jack Gold on the 6 Tbps claim.
“Data connections are much more susceptible to signal and bit drops than say a normal web connection for a browser would be,” he said. “So, ultimately, the speed is not only about the raw data speed, but also the reliability/quality of signal and lack of bit loss. Uplink/Downlink raw speed is only a component of that.”
SoftBank is notably also interested in supplying optical satellite connectivity, specifically for wireless communications. The company is part of a consortium that plans to launch a LEO satellite this year that can deliver high-speed bidirectional communication at 10 Gbps.
We won’t be seeing TeraWave in orbit anytime soon, as Blue Origin plans to begin deployment in Q4 2027. Meanwhile, Amazon is still preparing to launch Amazon Leo, its commercial broadband service for consumers and enterprises, later this year.
Amazon Leo’s initial constellation will include more than 3,000 satellites, but it’s only launched about 180 so far. This begs the question of how Blue Origin plans to deploy its satellites in a timely manner — and whether it can make enough rockets to do so, according to Recon Analytics Principal Roger Entner.
“If we take the Starlink math of 21 satellites per rocket, then this is 257 rocket launches.
TeraWave’s data center pitch
Unlike Amazon Leo and Starlink, TeraWave isn’t going after the consumer market. It’s pitching itself to the high-capacity crowd, which in Amazon’s case means 20 Gbps or higher, said Mobile Experts Principal Joe Madden.
“TeraWave is designed for the needs of Amazon’s data centers, and they plan to offer it to other large-scale data centers as well,” he said.
An optical signal in a glass fiber travels at about 200,000 kilometers per second, Madden explained. Whereas an optical signal in space can travel at 300,000 kilometers per second, which makes it ideal for “long-distance optical links.”
On the spectrum side, TeraWave is using the Q- and V-Bands (which fall into the 33-75 GHz range) for RF connectivity, while Starlink uses the Ka- and Ku-band (12-30 GHz) for broadband and bands below 3 GHz for direct-to-device service.
“The nature of Q/V-band is that RF signals are highly directional, keeping interference from other users low, so I don’t expect to see a battle over spectrum rights,” Madden said.
Steep competition with Starlink
While Blue Origin isn’t targeting consumers, it’s interested in serving government customers – a base where Starlink already has a sizable presence.
But even with both Amazon Leo and TeraWave on the horizon, the issue is “Starlink has a major head start with many times the number of satellites already in orbit and servicing customers,” Gold said.
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the competition, especially since both of these companies have some pretty deep pockets,” he said. “What this ultimately may result in is a price war as each tries to gain share on the others. But we are not at that point yet.”
Starlink counts over 9 million global subscribers and it just received U.S. federal approval to deploy another 7,500 satellites, so it’s clear Amazon has a lot of catching up to do.