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Amazon to acquire Globalstar and expand Amazon Leo satellite network
- kumarvvr 6mo agoSo, Amazon wants to own the tubes too? I guess the stack should be completed with this. AWS servers, satellite communications, boxes to view content on TVs, apps on mobiles, content creation studios, advertising, product placement, product sales. Whew! I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space, in case it becomes feasible to run space data centers.
- ge96 6mo agoAmazon seems to have a service for everything, one time I saw they had satellite ground station as a service
- jasoncartwright 6mo agohttps://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/
- compounding_it 6mo agoI think America in general is moving to a service based economy where you don’t own anything anymore. Everything from cars (lease) to homes (rentals) to electronics to insurance etc comes at a monthly cost. This kind of model works when the central government is trusted (or at least perceived to be trusted) to keep the wheel churning. I think the current government took some of the power back from big tech and people didn’t like it. Very interesting because the whole argument was private companies having too much power. Now the argument is government having too much power.
- enos_feedler 6mo agoYou only now just think this? The writing has been on the wall for quite some time. Especially as you move down in age cohort.
- wolvoleo 6mo agoYes even the WEF has been planning for this for a decade with their "you will own nothing but you will be happy" indoctrination.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- vjvjvjvjghv 6mo agoAt some point government and companies will be merging into one.
- piokoch 6mo agoWhy space data centers? What advantage this would have? Cooling will be a big issue, while it is easily solved on the planet earth, as we have water, air that can transfer heat away.
- nish__ 6mo agoYou don't have to buy real estate.
- iso1631 6mo agoLand is pretty much irellevent in the cost. The Utah Data Center [0] is a 200 acre plot with 35 acres of buildings. Even prime farmland values is arround $10k an acre, or $2m, but for other land you're talking $400k for that much land [1] It uses 65MW. The solar panels alone to generate that cost $100 per kW in bulk, or $6.5m. That's 570GWh a year. Mount Signal 1 Solar plant, from over a decade ago, produces about that currently. Total cost $365m [2]. Then there's the lifetime? What do you do in 36 months time when you want to replace the hardware with the latest generation? In an earthbound one you turn off the rack, remove the old kit, put the new kit in. In space, it just burns up in the atmosphere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center [1] https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebraska/25350821/ https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar
- karavelov 6mo ago> I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space Blue Origin is Jeff Bezos' private aerospace company
- bigfatkitten 6mo agoProbably for their existing L/S-band spectrum and carrier licenses.
- trhway 6mo agoThey would also need to protect all this stuff spread globally and into the space. No government will be able to do that - like we've already seen with the datacenters being hit in the Gulf states. Company like AMZN will have all the components for the most modern weapon system - global autonomous drone offense and defense network with the space component (or imagine a 1 GW datacenter in space temporarily rerouting its power into a laser or a microwave effector 80-ies StarWars style :) plus de-facto global intelligence network that each of these companies have, and thus will have and will be able to better protect themselves. Those large BigTechs will unavoidably have to move into defense, for themselves and as-a-service for smaller transnationals.
- iso1631 6mo agoThere is a constant lack of acceptance of the privatisation of the world in the tech industry. Or of course people realise it but like it. The randian matra of "Private = good, government = bad" always wins out You end up with a private company run by the elite, not the people. One Dollar One Vote.
- saltcured 6mo agoWell if they really want to be full stack, they need to also get down into pharmaceuticals and bio-engineering, right?
- jameslk 6mo agoSpaceX and Amazon seem to be headed for competing with traditional telecoms and ISPs. I'm betting the next acquisition target will be AST SpaceMobile. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see big telecom/ISP mergers pass regulatory approval now that they have competition from the heavens
- RobotToaster 6mo ago> I'm betting the next acquisition target will be AST SpaceMobile. Or possibly viasat.
- cubefox 6mo ago> SpaceX and Amazon seem to be headed for competing with traditional telecoms and ISPs. Traditional ISPs already have a nice network of copper and fiber optic cables. I don't think satellites offer any advantage to most people here, except for those living in an area with slow wired connections.
- direwolf20 6mo agoIt's all about bypassing regulations, just like Uber and AirBNB. Most US ISPs have old copper cables that only support DSL. Upgrading them means digging up the streets and that's expensive and a legal minefield. And those ISPs are local monopolies so why would they spend money just to keep the same number of customers who are locked in anyway?
- reportingsjr 6mo agoI don't think that is very true in this day in age. Here in Cincinnati, the vast majority of houses now have fiber run to them. There are still some stragglers, but that's mainly because slumlord apartment owners don't feel like dealing with upgrades.
- lxgr 6mo agoIntercontinental latency in air/vacuum is lower than in fiber (even in total, i.e. after accounting for the extra distance from ground and the legs up and down from/space), so there’s also a market for high frequency trading.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo ago[flagged]
- nixass 6mo agoIf something hits a house then you can analyze what hit it. I wouldn't make a conspiracy out of it. Meteor and space junk are quite different things.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoYou can, but what if they don’t want to?
- nixass 6mo ago"they"
- aniviacat 6mo agoSpace junk would come down in other countries, too. Even if there was a great conspiracy of "them" in the USA, there's plenty of others to report on it.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoReporting on something is rather late after it’s already hit its target, don’t you think? The key to strategic usage of deorbiting is that the mass is already in position, and only needs to be properly wielded. No amount of “investigation” or reporting would stop that from happening.
- Ekaros 6mo agoI wonder if there will become a point where these companies will be considered too big and will be forcibly cut up to smaller chunks... If feels like they have tentacles in everything now.
- nutjob2 6mo agoThere is no such thing as a company being "too big", it's only a question of market power (eg monopolies) and abuse of that power. For LEO data it seems that there will be plenty of competition. If you're talking about Amazon, they're in fiercely competitive markets. Them having the capital and cash flow ('size') to launch a competitor to SpazX is only a good thing.
- spondyl 6mo agoOh, I missed the memo that Amazon Leo is the new name for Project Kuiper, rebranded in November of last year. I saw a presentation back when it was Kuiper so have still been calling it that
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- philipwhiuk 6mo agoLeo is a dumb name. I still call it Kuiper.
- everfrustrated 6mo agoHelps to think of it less as lion and more of an orbit.
- ck2 6mo agoAre we going to be able to see the night sky by the end of this decade? https://satellitemap.space https://satellitemap.space And what's the effect on cancer rates, etc. from all that toxic pollution to both launch the satellites and then vaporize them in the atmosphere years later? https://bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellites-pollution https://bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellites-p... Sure would be nice if the answers to these questions were not guessing before we do the damage and impossible to fix after
- Egonex 6mo agoPeople think that with better D2D technology, emergency and telemetry messages will still be short and to the point. These messages will not be like streaming videos. When companies work together on things, like spectrum and constellations and handset deals it changes how people get billed.. It does not change the fact that people want to keep the messages small when millions of devices are using the same channel. I am curious to see if people will still talk about having satellite access or if they will start talking about paying for what they use once this is up and running. D2D technology is still going to be used for these messages.
- bobdvb 6mo agoSpectrum contention is going to be insane in D2D. Starlink already has to constrain the number of broadband accounts per locale to avoid saturation.
- lxgr 6mo agoFixed Starlink is competing with fiber/DOCSIS/DSL, though. That's orders of magnitude more bandwidth than people in areas remote enough to not warrant a terrestrial cell base station (which could itself also be backhauled over much more efficient fixed satellite).
- bobdvb 6mo agoIt's definitely competing in rural areas, but Starlink does suffer from physical limitations on the number of terminals per geographic area. This is a long standing problem with cellular in urban areas. For example at Clapham Junction train station in London, which is not a terminus but a through station with 17 platforms and around 2000 trains passing each day, the local cell towers struggle to keep up with demand because so many devices pass in and out of the station every few minutes. For Starlink D2D they can definitely gap fill for rural areas, but people are mistaken if they think Starlink can compete with the majority of the users (who aren't rural). Less than 10% of rural folk in the USA have unreliable signal. That's still an interesting market, because that's somewhere in the region of 3-6mil people. But I want to temper the hype because people seem to think LEO satellite can take over everything, when the reality is that terrestrial connectivity is always going to be better for the majority because of physics.
- supernova87a 6mo agoI remain convinced that the main successful business model in the satellite communications industry is to wait for the first incarnation of the satellite company to fail / go bankrupt / flounder, and then be part of the 2nd round of financing or ownership that comes in to buy it out and operate it... I don't know why this is the pattern but it seems to have played out several times over the last 2 decades that I've casually watched this syndrome.
- SMAAART 6mo agoClayton M. Christensen (The innovator's dilemma) would agree.
- chiph 6mo agoIf you haven't read Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story you should. The system was operational, but Motorola's dysfunction and impossible sales goals leading to disillusionment meant that Dan Colussy & team was able to pick it up for $25 million (development price: $5 billion)
- vjvjvjvjghv 6mo agoOr also owning a rocket company that launches your satellites at low cost.
- gangstead 6mo agoThey were about $3 billion in the hole when they went through bankruptcy in 2002 and the new owners bought it for $43 million (from Wikipedia). In 2025 they earned a return of $-8 million on that investment (plus any other money raised since then, such as $1 billion from Apple). So even the second incarnation doesn't seem to be a good business model even with free satellites. The business model that works seems to be spectrum gambling. Do the minimum amount of satellite investment for decades until someone with a real business plan comes along and has to go through you to get it.
- Zigurd 6mo agoIridium was first. It was a cautionary lesson. Listen to Patrick Boyle regarding Starlink. Not everyone was paying attention in class.
- crowcroft 6mo agoNaive question - let's assume this all becomes a really competitive market and 10+ companies are pumping satellites into orbit. Are we going to run out of space? At some point it probably makes the most sense for there to be one wholesaler of satellite connections and then many retailers right? The market skews towards being an international natural monopoly, right?
- lxgr 6mo agoI'd say there's plenty of room for competitors along multiple dimensions: Geopolitical security (this alone will probably preclude a single monopoly), price and lack of a moat (once a monopolist starts jacking up prices, there's an immediate incentive for an alternative), delivery profile (store-and-forward for IoT-like use cases vs. dumb pipe vs. in-space forwarding), frequency band (L- or S-band for direct to device vs. Ku/Ka band requiring directional terminals) etc. The only thing that's actually scarce and that could be monopolized rather easily is frequency spectrum. In fact, I suspect this to be a frequency/operating license driven acquisition.
- crowcroft 6mo agoI disagree on some of those dimensions (esp. lack of a moat), but agree things like geopolitics and security would lead to multiple wholesale providers. My concern is that globally international relations are an absolute MESS, but there really needs to be some level of coordination here.
- lxgr 6mo agoAs I see it, the moat for terrestrial (and in particular wire-based) last-mile comms infrastructure is that each additional customer connected is often expensive, and if they switch to your competition, that wire is basically a sunk investment. For wireless, the dynamics are very different (as long as spectrum isn't monopolized). As soon as you have enough satellites launched for global coverage, you can compete for all customers, and each one that switches away to the competition is more bandwidth available to you to undercut your competitor on pricing with.
- lxgr 6mo agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770323 My comment from there: Interesting, I was expecting Apple to eventually buy them. Still, makes sense to me: The aging Globalstar satellite constellation itself is probably not very interesting to Amazon, but their global L-band and S-band spectrum is, as are their existing licenses to operate a mobile satellite service in most countries.
- bequanna 6mo agoPost-Jobs Apple seems paralyzed and unable to commit to any big moves. It is impossible to overstate the success of the iPhone, but there are so many recent examples where they dipped their toes in only to fail or be left behind (autos, VR, AI, etc). What will the next 20 years of Apple look like? Just more iPhones?
- fckgw 6mo agoApple Watch and Airpods are two of the largest consumer product launches of the last 10 years and they're both post-Jobs.
- mrguyorama 6mo agoThe same as it has for about the past 20 years? Take a 30% cut of all transactions that ever happen as long as an iPhone was somewhere in the process. Charging a high fee to be a middleman is insanely profitable. People shouldn't be surprised that companies that get there don't do anything else.
- lxgr 6mo agoI'm not surprised, but I think it's fair to find it upsetting. It's a twofold loss: A loss of competition in all markets that Apple monopolizes, and a loss of everybody working towards protecting that golden goose instead of actually improving the product.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoWe need to start requiring that for each batch of satellites that goes up, some piece of space junk - hell, any piece of space junk - gets brought back to Earth's surface in one piece for proper recycling.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoAny reasonable government regulatory agency would block this aquisition. Amazon just laid off 16,000 people. They are unworthy of further consolidation.
- ChrisArchitect 6mo agoRelated: Amazon acquires Apple's satellite partner https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768723