{"id":17919,"date":"2019-10-10T23:57:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T15:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/amazon-exec-dave-limp-expects-project-kuiper-satellites-to-boost-sales-and-cloud\/"},"modified":"2019-10-10T23:57:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T15:57:00","slug":"amazon-exec-dave-limp-expects-project-kuiper-satellites-to-boost-sales-and-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/amazon-exec-dave-limp-expects-project-kuiper-satellites-to-boost-sales-and-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon exec Dave Limp expects Project Kuiper satellites to boost sales and cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Amazon's
Dave Limp, Amazon\u2019s devices and services chief, chats with GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop during the GeekWire Summit. (Photo by Dan DeLong for GeekWire)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why is Amazon planning to put thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit? Part of the motivation is to expand Amazon\u2019s footprint in online sales and cloud computing services, says Dave Limp, the company\u2019s devices and services chief.<\/p>\n

During a fireside chat at this week\u2019s GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Limp said the primary motivation for Project Kuiper, Amazon\u2019s future satellite mega-satellite constellation, is to offer broadband internet access to the billions of people who are currently underserved. That echoes what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at the re:MARS conference in June when he talked about Project Kuiper\u2019s genesis.<\/p>\n

Building basic infrastructure is also the justification for Amazon\u2019s newly announced effort to build a low-bandwidth, intermediate-range wireless network known as Sidewalk. Project Sidewalk will connect devices that take advantage of the Internet of Things \u2014 ranging from appliances to smart lights and dog collars.<\/p>\n

Limp made clear this week that providing connectivity isn\u2019t a purely philanthropic effort. He said that faster, wider broadband access can boost retail markets as well as the reach of Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the company\u2019s cloud platform.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Limp explained the business case at the GeekWire Summit:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere are lots of places on Earth that are incredibly well-served by wireless. But when you map it out, and we have done this pretty carefully, there are lots of blank spots. And by the way, immediately your mind goes, \u2018Oh, well, there\u2019s a big blank spot in sub-Saharan Africa.\u2019 You don\u2019t have to go that far.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just have to go to Eastern Washington, and you can find lots of areas where connectivity is very difficult to get. And if you do have connectivity, it\u2019s not the connectivity that we\u2019re now beginning to take for granted. It\u2019s running off legacy copper, in many instances, or off satellite systems that, because of the constraints on how to get things to space, have very long latency and lower bandwidth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about Amazon and what we want to do in the future, we want everybody connected. A, it\u2019s good for society, and B, it also will be good for Amazon. Obviously, more people can shop, which we like, and more people can get access to things like Alexa, and more developers can get access to things like AWS.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, connectivity is kind of a primitive, first and foremost, but it\u2019s getting close to a human right. If you were writing a new Bill of Rights today, you might put connectivity in it. It\u2019s close to that. [There are] lots of things small companies can do. They\u2019re nimble, they\u2019re in a garage, they can invent super-fast. [But] there are some things that, for bigger companies \u2014 it\u2019s on our shoulders to solve. This is an example of one of those.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo solve that connectivity \u2026 on a global basis, we\u2019re going to have to put 3,236 satellites up. That\u2019s going to take billions and billions of dollars of capital. And by the way, it\u2019s high risk. We\u2019ve got a lot of invention ahead of us. But I like that we\u2019re willing to take on the responsibility for trying to do that. I think we can also turn it into a good business. That\u2019s not lost on us. But when you can get the overlap of the Venn diagrams of \u201cgood businesses\u201d with \u201cgreater good,\u201d those are the things you want to work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cKindle was that way for me. That\u2019s why I came to Amazon. If we can help with literacy and reading in the world, and also turn it into a pretty good business, that\u2019s a good job to have.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Limp and other executives at Amazon and Project Kuiper have been meeting with regulatory officials to work out the details for Project Kuiper, according to recent filings with the Federal Communications Commission. Amazon hasn\u2019t yet gone public with its timetable for satellite deployment, and it\u2019s clear that providing Project Kuiper connectivity is at least a couple of years away. (More than 100 job openings for the project have been posted to Amazon\u2019s website, with nearly all those jobs based in Bellevue, Wash.)<\/p>\n

Bezos has a privately held space venture called Blue Origin that\u2019s due to start sending up satellites in 2021 \u2014 and although as a publicly traded company, Amazon would have to exercise due diligence to select a launch provider for Project Kuiper, Blue Origin will surely be on the list of prospective partners.<\/p>\n

Project Kuiper is a relative latecomer to the race to provide satellite broadband access. Three competitors \u2014 SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat \u2014 have already started assembling mega-constellations in low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is counting on generating billions of dollars in revenue once his Starlink satellite network hits full stride, perhaps as early as 2021. That\u2019s billions of dollars that Amazon and SpaceX\u2019s other rivals will be going after as well. But for all the disadvantages that come with bringing up the rear, Amazon has a market advantage that the others lack: a guaranteed, built-in customer by the name of Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Limp, Amazon\u2019s devices and services chief, chats with GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop during the GeekWire Summit. (Photo by Dan DeLong for GeekWire) Why is Amazon planning to put thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit? Part of the motivation is to expand Amazon\u2019s footprint in online sales and cloud computing services, says Dave Limp, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4946,275,719,962,20,442,21],"class_list":["post-17919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2019-geekwire-summit","tag-amazon","tag-dave-limp","tag-project-kuiper","tag-satellite","tag-satellites","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}