Jeff Bezos reveals plan for next satellite megaconstellation

Blue Origin claims TeraWave network will be faster than SpaceX’s Starlink

Jeff Bezos during a press conference about Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket on 20 July, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas (Getty Images)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has announced plans to launch more than 5,000 satellites into low Earth orbit as part of plans to build a space internet network to compete with rival billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The TeraWave network will be operated by Mr Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin, offering businesses speeds of up to 6 Tbps. This exceeds Starlink’s current residential speeds, though Mr Musk responded to the latest news by claiming that Starlink’s speeds “will exceed this”.

SpaceX’s Starlink already holds a big advantage over Blue Origin in terms of network size and customer base, with a reported 9 million users around the world.

The new TeraWave network is designed specifically for moving large amounts of data, rather than individual customers.

“This network will service tens of thousands of enterprise, data centre, and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations,” Blue Origin said in a statement.

“The TeraWave architecture consists of 5,408 optically interconnected satellites in LEO and MEO, reaching remote, rural, and suburban areas where diverse fiber paths are costly, technically infeasible, or slow to deploy, while providing additional route diversity and strengthening overall network resilience.”

Mr Musk’s Starlink network currently dominates low Earth orbit, controlling roughly two thirds of all active satellites.

SpaceX recently received permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch a further 7,500 satellites, with Mr Musk hoping to eventually expand the Starlink network to 34,400 satellites by the 2030s, pending approval.

Blue Origin said it will begin building out its TeraWave satellite constellation at the end of 2027.

Other satellite-internet megaconstellations currently under construction include two built by Chinese firms – Guowang and Qianfan – and another being set up by Amazon.

Formerly known as Project Kuiper, Amazon Leo was unveiled last year with the intention of launching more than 3,000 satellites into orbit.

Mr Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021, 27 years after founding the company, but still serves as an executive chairman.

His focus has since switched to Blue Origin and a new AI startup Project Prometheus that could compete with Mr Musk’s xAI venture.

The two billionaires, who have exchanged places several times as the world’s richest person, have traded criticisms of each other’s companies in the past, with Mr Musk referring to Mr Bezos as a “copycat” for his space and AI ventures.

Blue Origin has also filed legal challenges to multi-billion dollar contracts awarded by Nasa to develop spacecraft for its Artemis Moon missions.