16 ms·

Amazon has acquired Facebook's satellite internet team

208 points by alexrustic 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
Was it ever a serious effort; or was it an excuse to get the FCC to hinder similar projects?
- Mxs2000 5y ago
  From Facebook's POV? Very serious. Edit: For added context, I worked on this along with several other FB Connectivity projects.
  - matmatmatmat 5y ago
    That's interesting, can you share anything about why we never really seemed to see much of this team's work?
    - tguvot 5y ago
      as somebody who worked in this org: they are mostly focused on research, enablement and getting new tech used by operators of different sizes. Low level network tech is not sexy and doesn't really makes news
      - matmatmatmat 5y ago
        That makes sense, thanks!
- mcintyre1994 5y ago
  I guess they must have something if Amazon are buying it instead of it just being abandoned by Facebook.
- toast0 5y ago
  Disclosure: I worked at FB, but not on connectivity projects, although I was adjacent to internet.org. As far as I could tell, these were serious efforts, but it's important to understand the organizational goals. Facebook benefits from increased connectivity regardless of who operates the network (as long as it's not actively hostile to FB, anyway). So there was a focus on research and publication rather than build-out. If FB can find a viable improvement in networks, and convince networks to use it, that increases connectivity which is good for FB. Additionaly, if network providers use FB developed technology in their networks, it might improve relations with those networks, which are sometimes strained because of competition in the messaging space. In my mind, this is the same as Google Fiber. Google Fiber was a terrible business for Google, but as a result of announcing their plans to build out in specific cities, the incumbent networks built out high speed fiber in most (or all) of those cities and maybe a few other places, which increases penetration of high speed connectivity, which is good for Google as a whole, so it's still a win.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    "A rising tide lifts all boats" sounds like a pretty good reason to me. Thanks very much for illuminating more of the details.
exdsq 5y ago
> Amazon aims to have a 3,236-satellite constellation in orbit by 2029 Assuming Starlink is similar, are there any risks of "imprisonment" on Earth having ~8k low-orbit satellites flying around? In that they gravely affect efforts to fly Humans to the Moon/Mars?
- ncallaway 5y ago
  I haven't looked at the Amazon plans, but the risks of something like Kessler syndrome "trapping" us on earth from Starlink are low. The main reason is that the Starlink satellites fly in a very low altitude, such that even if they lose all control, they will deorbit in a few years. Which means, if something went horrifically wrong, the Starlink system debris would clear itself within a short period of time. It looks like the Amazon Project Kuiper satellites will be slightly higher up, but still have a natural orbital decay time of between 5-7 years. https://spacenews.com/amazon-lays-out-constellation-service-goals-deployment-and-deorbit-plans-to-fcc/ https://spacenews.com/amazon-lays-out-constellation-service-... So, the long term risks from these kinds of low-orbit mega constellations is fairly low. If anything goes catastrophically wrong we wait a decade and it's gone. I think personally, the longer term risks we should be wary of are medium altitude and geostationary orbits that won't naturally clear themselves for decades or centuries if something goes wrong.
- T-A 5y ago
  Suppose there were only 8000 cars in the world, evenly spread all over it (I'm being generous here, since 2/3 of Earth is covered by water). How likely would you be to ever see one?
  - kamkazemoose 5y ago
    The starlink satellites are traveling a little bit faster than your average car though. They complete an orbit about every 100 minutes. So your 8000 satalites are covering much more ground than the same 8000 cars.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
sayem38 5y ago
Amazon has significantly ramped up hiring efforts for Project Kuiper at its Redmond headquarters, with 500 employees currently aboard and 200 open positions
AlexandrB 5y ago
Imagine Walmart at the height of their retail power, but they also control the infrastructure running a huge portion of the internet, several media properties, and are working on creating a new ISP - that's Amazon. We're heading into a world where the likes of Standard Oil will look like a quaint "lifestyle business" compared to the FAANG giants.
- k__ 5y ago
  Doesn't Biden plan to go big on anti trust laws? Some stuff I read sounded rather bleak for the likes of FAANG.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Politicians' plans and politicians' accomplishments tend to be vastly different things.
    - dan_quixote 5y ago
      We're starting to get some political alignment on anti-trust against Amazon at least. Though one party seems motivated by worker/consumer right, the other by retaliation for Bezos' ownership of WaPo.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        I fully expect Amazon's lobbying arms to be able to exploit that sort of ideological split.
      - fallingknife 5y ago
        It would be very easy for Bezos to divest WaPo or tilt its coverage more conservative to buy off an anti-trust issue.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
herbst 5y ago
Is there any reason we need several private companies doing their own thing instead of making this a world wide project where every company can buy in? I mean sure nobody would have done anything like that without Starlink. But it's like every mobile provider would setup their own antennas in a way.
- kube-system 5y ago
  In a broader sense, I think that redundant competing efforts to accomplish the same task is a much more reliable path to success.
- toast0 5y ago
  It might be a more efficient network if it were a single system. However, having the option to switch networks increases the efficiency of administration, customer service, etc.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Various reasons - capitalism, the degraded ability of bureaucracies to manage things compared to agile private enterprises as technology improves, conflicts of interest between nation states, and so forth. Government is not a great mechanism to drive innovation by itself, especially cooperative multi-state efforts. Things are better managed by governments setting good rules in place and private sector entities doing whatever they can to profit within the bounds of those rules.
- paxys 5y ago
  You are getting downvoted but this is 100% true. Imagine if every maps provider or weather app had to launch their own satellites to offer basic functionality. A large collective investment into core infrastructure benefits everyone. Not every aspect of life needs to be a privatized free for all.
  - herbst 5y ago
    Yeah. I too totally realize that this is simply how competition works and prolly even leads to a more competitive and better market. Our mobile market is a expensive mess because of the regulation. I understand all of that. I guess it's just wishful thinking that this could be one thing where the world gets their shit together.
highfrequency 5y ago
Are these global internet initiatives targeting faster internet (10+ Gbps) or just more accessible internet for poor regions?
- deelowe 5y ago
  I believe it's both, but mostly accessibility. Access to internet is seen as limitation on growth for the large companies. Bandwith is certainly factor though when considering AMZN's media empire.
- agildehaus 5y ago
  Faster than what, fiber? DOCSIS 3.0? No. 10x faster than anything that has ever been available in many regions of the globe that currently have some form of limited access? Yes. And then of course this Internet being available absolutely everywhere on Earth.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  I think an underrated part of this is applications for merchant ships and edge compute in LEO (though I don’t think Amazon has discussed this explicitly). The enterprise use cases could be interesting.
- mdasen 5y ago
  It's very unlikely to be faster internet (compared to what is generally available in urban/suburban America). Ultimately, we're using radio similar to any 4G or 5G connection. There are some differences, but they probably work against satellite internet more than they work for it. Terrestrial wireless networks like Verizon or T-Mobile can easily split cells to get more capacity (install another tower and split traffic between them). It's harder to do that with satellites. Plus the satellites will be over ocean so much of the time when their capacity can't be used (and other satellites in the network will take that traffic). You do get better line-of-sight which is helpful, but the amount of capacity is somewhat limited. Elon Musk has even said that they'll "most likely" be able to serve 500,000 customers. "More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range." These are unlikely to be services that offer a faster internet completion for people who are already well-served. Of course, there are a lot of people who aren't well-served. Over the coming years, 5G home internet is going to become more common. T-Mobile is looking to sign up 7-8M customers which would make them the 4th largest home broadband provider. Verizon has announced that they want to cover 50M households for home internet by the end of 2024 (T-Mobile already offers home internet coverage to 30M households; also, remember that while there are 330M people in the US, there's only around 130M households). While 5G won't reach everywhere that satellite will, it will fill in some of the broadband gaps that we currently have. 5G will also offer an alternative to wired home internet in many areas. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fight-against-spacex-tell-fcc-that-starlink-will-be-too-slow/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fig... A lot of the interest in satellite broadband is driven by government money. The US government is offering $9.2B to expand access to 5.2M home/businesses in this one instance and there's a lot more money where that came from. The Universal Service Fund in the US shells out billions every year to companies providing rural connectivity. It might not even be that there's much interest in these programs beyond government subsidies. Of course, once the satellites are traveling over other areas, might as well make the service available and get some extra money. Musk has said that Starlink might require a $30B investment to be viable, but might become cash-flow positive after $5-10B. $5-10B is probably well within the realm of government subsidy in the US. I mean, the government will definitely be spending much more than that subsidizing rural broadband over the coming years, but whether Starlink/SpaceX will get that money remains to be seen. I wouldn't say this is just about poor regions. There are plenty of far-flung places that I wouldn't classify as "poor" that don't have great internet.
cheche07 5y ago
Amazon War: fight with dollaroni$$$
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
we are in the new age of consolidation. Just like the combustion engine development created the transportation and assembly revolution some ~60 years after, profits from the newly created peripheral markets led to massive profits in specific tech sectors (oil, steel)... Flush with cash, they started horizontal, vertical acquisitions, leading to the massive corps of the time (1950s). We now have the internet. We are roughly almost 60 years into the internet creation revolution cycle. We have seen how this movie plays out.
miguelrochefort 5y ago
It's amazing how big these tech companies are getting: https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/tech-giant/ https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/tech-giant/
- yaitsyaboi 5y ago
  Fascinating blog post. Satellite internet seems just as valuable to FB as Amzn I wonder why they’d spin it off when they have so many other projects that are less useful
pinewurst 5y ago
Can you imagine working at FB, which despite its considerable ethical failings, is a decent employer from what I've seen and suddenly being told you're going to Amazon and need to start memorizing The Principles?
- MisterPea 5y ago
  amazon subsidiaries still operate with their previous culture to some degree. Twitch is much different than the rest of amazon. However, since they will be merging into an existing org not sure if their culture will remain
  - walrus01 5y ago
    I'm sure Amazon Corp HQ is taking a boiled frog approach to absorbing things like this.
  - chrislan815 5y ago
    I heard they are still very much different from amazon after the merge which is good to hear. However, it was told by a hiring manager :) So it's not from my personal experience.
    - tmccrary55 5y ago
      It's going to be at least a year before the incoming FB team will be taking their vows.
    - TheHydroImpulse 5y ago
      still very different but amazon has its influences in many parts of the company now.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  I've worked at Amazon and other FANG companies and I honestly miss amazon's leadership principles. They're really just assigning a phrase to a Good Idea (TM).
thenightcrawler 5y ago
This makes it sound like a trade.
thenightcrawler 5y ago
This makes it sound like a sports team trarde.
perlgeek 5y ago
Comparing the launch costs: > "The average launch cost for Atlas was about $225 million per lift," Bruno told FLORIDA TODAY this week. "Where Atlas V is at today is almost half of that just by virtue of all the changes we have done in this business." from [1], so around 100Mio per launch. The same article cites 50-60Mio per Falcon 9 launch. [2] says the payload mass to LEO is between 9.5 and 18.5 metric tonnes for the Atlas V (depending on the configuration, mostly how many boosters you attach), and 16.8T for a reusable Falcon 9. So I'd say Amazon pays at least twice as much as Starlink, measured by mass in LEO. [1]: https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2020/11/04/ula-ceo-our-rocket-launch-prices-even-lower-than-expected-florida/6135231002/ https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2020/11... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_s...

208 points by alexrustic 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago

Was it ever a serious effort; or was it an excuse to get the FCC to hinder similar projects?

Mxs2000 5y ago
From Facebook's POV? Very serious. Edit: For added context, I worked on this along with several other FB Connectivity projects.
- matmatmatmat 5y ago
  That's interesting, can you share anything about why we never really seemed to see much of this team's work?
  - tguvot 5y ago
    as somebody who worked in this org: they are mostly focused on research, enablement and getting new tech used by operators of different sizes. Low level network tech is not sexy and doesn't really makes news
    - matmatmatmat 5y ago
      That makes sense, thanks!
mcintyre1994 5y ago
I guess they must have something if Amazon are buying it instead of it just being abandoned by Facebook.
toast0 5y ago
Disclosure: I worked at FB, but not on connectivity projects, although I was adjacent to internet.org. As far as I could tell, these were serious efforts, but it's important to understand the organizational goals. Facebook benefits from increased connectivity regardless of who operates the network (as long as it's not actively hostile to FB, anyway). So there was a focus on research and publication rather than build-out. If FB can find a viable improvement in networks, and convince networks to use it, that increases connectivity which is good for FB. Additionaly, if network providers use FB developed technology in their networks, it might improve relations with those networks, which are sometimes strained because of competition in the messaging space. In my mind, this is the same as Google Fiber. Google Fiber was a terrible business for Google, but as a result of announcing their plans to build out in specific cities, the incumbent networks built out high speed fiber in most (or all) of those cities and maybe a few other places, which increases penetration of high speed connectivity, which is good for Google as a whole, so it's still a win.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "A rising tide lifts all boats" sounds like a pretty good reason to me. Thanks very much for illuminating more of the details.

exdsq 5y ago

> Amazon aims to have a 3,236-satellite constellation in orbit by 2029 Assuming Starlink is similar, are there any risks of "imprisonment" on Earth having ~8k low-orbit satellites flying around? In that they gravely affect efforts to fly Humans to the Moon/Mars?

ncallaway 5y ago
I haven't looked at the Amazon plans, but the risks of something like Kessler syndrome "trapping" us on earth from Starlink are low. The main reason is that the Starlink satellites fly in a very low altitude, such that even if they lose all control, they will deorbit in a few years. Which means, if something went horrifically wrong, the Starlink system debris would clear itself within a short period of time. It looks like the Amazon Project Kuiper satellites will be slightly higher up, but still have a natural orbital decay time of between 5-7 years. https://spacenews.com/amazon-lays-out-constellation-service-goals-deployment-and-deorbit-plans-to-fcc/ https://spacenews.com/amazon-lays-out-constellation-service-... So, the long term risks from these kinds of low-orbit mega constellations is fairly low. If anything goes catastrophically wrong we wait a decade and it's gone. I think personally, the longer term risks we should be wary of are medium altitude and geostationary orbits that won't naturally clear themselves for decades or centuries if something goes wrong.
T-A 5y ago
Suppose there were only 8000 cars in the world, evenly spread all over it (I'm being generous here, since 2/3 of Earth is covered by water). How likely would you be to ever see one?
- kamkazemoose 5y ago
  The starlink satellites are traveling a little bit faster than your average car though. They complete an orbit about every 100 minutes. So your 8000 satalites are covering much more ground than the same 8000 cars.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago

sayem38 5y ago

Amazon has significantly ramped up hiring efforts for Project Kuiper at its Redmond headquarters, with 500 employees currently aboard and 200 open positions

AlexandrB 5y ago

Imagine Walmart at the height of their retail power, but they also control the infrastructure running a huge portion of the internet, several media properties, and are working on creating a new ISP - that's Amazon. We're heading into a world where the likes of Standard Oil will look like a quaint "lifestyle business" compared to the FAANG giants.

k__ 5y ago
Doesn't Biden plan to go big on anti trust laws? Some stuff I read sounded rather bleak for the likes of FAANG.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Politicians' plans and politicians' accomplishments tend to be vastly different things.
  - dan_quixote 5y ago
    We're starting to get some political alignment on anti-trust against Amazon at least. Though one party seems motivated by worker/consumer right, the other by retaliation for Bezos' ownership of WaPo.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      I fully expect Amazon's lobbying arms to be able to exploit that sort of ideological split.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      It would be very easy for Bezos to divest WaPo or tilt its coverage more conservative to buy off an anti-trust issue.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

herbst 5y ago

Is there any reason we need several private companies doing their own thing instead of making this a world wide project where every company can buy in? I mean sure nobody would have done anything like that without Starlink. But it's like every mobile provider would setup their own antennas in a way.

kube-system 5y ago
In a broader sense, I think that redundant competing efforts to accomplish the same task is a much more reliable path to success.
toast0 5y ago
It might be a more efficient network if it were a single system. However, having the option to switch networks increases the efficiency of administration, customer service, etc.
robbedpeter 5y ago
Various reasons - capitalism, the degraded ability of bureaucracies to manage things compared to agile private enterprises as technology improves, conflicts of interest between nation states, and so forth. Government is not a great mechanism to drive innovation by itself, especially cooperative multi-state efforts. Things are better managed by governments setting good rules in place and private sector entities doing whatever they can to profit within the bounds of those rules.
paxys 5y ago
You are getting downvoted but this is 100% true. Imagine if every maps provider or weather app had to launch their own satellites to offer basic functionality. A large collective investment into core infrastructure benefits everyone. Not every aspect of life needs to be a privatized free for all.
- herbst 5y ago
  Yeah. I too totally realize that this is simply how competition works and prolly even leads to a more competitive and better market. Our mobile market is a expensive mess because of the regulation. I understand all of that. I guess it's just wishful thinking that this could be one thing where the world gets their shit together.

highfrequency 5y ago

Are these global internet initiatives targeting faster internet (10+ Gbps) or just more accessible internet for poor regions?

deelowe 5y ago
I believe it's both, but mostly accessibility. Access to internet is seen as limitation on growth for the large companies. Bandwith is certainly factor though when considering AMZN's media empire.
agildehaus 5y ago
Faster than what, fiber? DOCSIS 3.0? No. 10x faster than anything that has ever been available in many regions of the globe that currently have some form of limited access? Yes. And then of course this Internet being available absolutely everywhere on Earth.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
I think an underrated part of this is applications for merchant ships and edge compute in LEO (though I don’t think Amazon has discussed this explicitly). The enterprise use cases could be interesting.
mdasen 5y ago
It's very unlikely to be faster internet (compared to what is generally available in urban/suburban America). Ultimately, we're using radio similar to any 4G or 5G connection. There are some differences, but they probably work against satellite internet more than they work for it. Terrestrial wireless networks like Verizon or T-Mobile can easily split cells to get more capacity (install another tower and split traffic between them). It's harder to do that with satellites. Plus the satellites will be over ocean so much of the time when their capacity can't be used (and other satellites in the network will take that traffic). You do get better line-of-sight which is helpful, but the amount of capacity is somewhat limited. Elon Musk has even said that they'll "most likely" be able to serve 500,000 customers. "More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range." These are unlikely to be services that offer a faster internet completion for people who are already well-served. Of course, there are a lot of people who aren't well-served. Over the coming years, 5G home internet is going to become more common. T-Mobile is looking to sign up 7-8M customers which would make them the 4th largest home broadband provider. Verizon has announced that they want to cover 50M households for home internet by the end of 2024 (T-Mobile already offers home internet coverage to 30M households; also, remember that while there are 330M people in the US, there's only around 130M households). While 5G won't reach everywhere that satellite will, it will fill in some of the broadband gaps that we currently have. 5G will also offer an alternative to wired home internet in many areas. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fight-against-spacex-tell-fcc-that-starlink-will-be-too-slow/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fig... A lot of the interest in satellite broadband is driven by government money. The US government is offering $9.2B to expand access to 5.2M home/businesses in this one instance and there's a lot more money where that came from. The Universal Service Fund in the US shells out billions every year to companies providing rural connectivity. It might not even be that there's much interest in these programs beyond government subsidies. Of course, once the satellites are traveling over other areas, might as well make the service available and get some extra money. Musk has said that Starlink might require a $30B investment to be viable, but might become cash-flow positive after $5-10B. $5-10B is probably well within the realm of government subsidy in the US. I mean, the government will definitely be spending much more than that subsidizing rural broadband over the coming years, but whether Starlink/SpaceX will get that money remains to be seen. I wouldn't say this is just about poor regions. There are plenty of far-flung places that I wouldn't classify as "poor" that don't have great internet.

cheche07 5y ago

Amazon War: fight with dollaroni$$$

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

we are in the new age of consolidation. Just like the combustion engine development created the transportation and assembly revolution some ~60 years after, profits from the newly created peripheral markets led to massive profits in specific tech sectors (oil, steel)... Flush with cash, they started horizontal, vertical acquisitions, leading to the massive corps of the time (1950s). We now have the internet. We are roughly almost 60 years into the internet creation revolution cycle. We have seen how this movie plays out.

miguelrochefort 5y ago

It's amazing how big these tech companies are getting: https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/tech-giant/ https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/tech-giant/

yaitsyaboi 5y ago
Fascinating blog post. Satellite internet seems just as valuable to FB as Amzn I wonder why they’d spin it off when they have so many other projects that are less useful

pinewurst 5y ago

Can you imagine working at FB, which despite its considerable ethical failings, is a decent employer from what I've seen and suddenly being told you're going to Amazon and need to start memorizing The Principles?

MisterPea 5y ago
amazon subsidiaries still operate with their previous culture to some degree. Twitch is much different than the rest of amazon. However, since they will be merging into an existing org not sure if their culture will remain
- walrus01 5y ago
  I'm sure Amazon Corp HQ is taking a boiled frog approach to absorbing things like this.
- chrislan815 5y ago
  I heard they are still very much different from amazon after the merge which is good to hear. However, it was told by a hiring manager :) So it's not from my personal experience.
  - tmccrary55 5y ago
    It's going to be at least a year before the incoming FB team will be taking their vows.
  - TheHydroImpulse 5y ago
    still very different but amazon has its influences in many parts of the company now.
oh_sigh 5y ago
I've worked at Amazon and other FANG companies and I honestly miss amazon's leadership principles. They're really just assigning a phrase to a Good Idea (TM).

thenightcrawler 5y ago

This makes it sound like a trade.

thenightcrawler 5y ago

This makes it sound like a sports team trarde.

perlgeek 5y ago

Comparing the launch costs: > "The average launch cost for Atlas was about $225 million per lift," Bruno told FLORIDA TODAY this week. "Where Atlas V is at today is almost half of that just by virtue of all the changes we have done in this business." from [1], so around 100Mio per launch. The same article cites 50-60Mio per Falcon 9 launch. [2] says the payload mass to LEO is between 9.5 and 18.5 metric tonnes for the Atlas V (depending on the configuration, mostly how many boosters you attach), and 16.8T for a reusable Falcon 9. So I'd say Amazon pays at least twice as much as Starlink, measured by mass in LEO. [1]: https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2020/11/04/ula-ceo-our-rocket-launch-prices-even-lower-than-expected-florida/6135231002/ https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2020/11... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_s...