By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s state-owned internet network hired Amazon’s untested startup satellite service to link people who cannot access its terrestrial network, rather than tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Starlink.
The deal, whose financial terms were not disclosed, is set to provide high-speed internet access to some 300,000 homes and businesses that NBN Co’s terrestrial network does not reach.
From next year, low-Earth orbit satellites owned by Amazon’s Project Kuiper will start replacing two Australian government-owned satellites due for decommissioning in 2032, NBN and Amazon said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
“It is true that Amazon Kuiper has not launched services yet in Australia or globally, but they are reportedly pumping in about $15 billion into that programme,” said Gavin Williams, NBN’s chief development officer for regional and remote services.
“We have every confidence that we’ve got a partner in Kuiper that will do what they say they’re going to do,” he added in an interview.
NBN said its decision followed a rigorous procurement process, but did not say why it had chosen the Amazon service over Starlink.
The deal represents a missed opportunity for Starlink, by far the world’s biggest provider of such network services, which already has more than 250,000 customers in Australia, industry data shows.
The decision was probably influenced by the need to limit sovereign risk arising from giving control of essential Australian infrastructure to a company aligned with “a very unpredictable America”, said telecoms analyst Paul Budde.
“I am sure total dependence on Starlink would not be seen as a favourable situation,” Budde, an industry veteran who has advised the United Nations on broadband policy, added in an email.
If U.S. President Donald Trump was not happy with something he could use both Starlink and Kuiper for political purposes, which was a worrying factor, Budde said.
Starlink was not immediately available for comment.
Australia’s two biggest telecoms providers sell Starlink residential connection dishes and some government bodies, including the Australian Electoral Commission, also have contracts with it.
A unit of Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, Starlink now has 8,000 fast-orbiting satellites since it began launching them in 2019, while Amazon’s service has just 78 since its first launch in April.
NBN and Amazon said Project Kuiper would ultimately have more than 3,200. The low-Earth orbit satellites will connect to each other by optical links and communicate with antennas and other points on the ground.
NBN’s Williams added that the supply of critical infrastructure entailed regulatory and legal obligations, with technical, operational, and commercial considerations factored into the procurement process.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye and Alasdair Pal; Editing by Kate Mayberry and Clarence Fernandez)
