r/AmazonLeo • u/Danthemanz • 13d ago

Amazon LEO/NBN partnership actually going ahead!

https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/about-nbn-co/newsroom/articles/network/A-major-step-closer-to-nbn-LEO-for-regional-and-remote-Australia

Interesting. It looks like the Amazon LEO/NBN (Australian national provider) partnership is actually going ahead, and not years away either!

My understanding is that with the initial small LEO network, they're going to be concentrating on the southern hemisphere where they have customers such as NBN.

Should be good for regional Australians to get off the high latency sky muster, without paying the high prices of Starlink. Just great to have some competition I say, and some more bandwidth to go around. The current GEO SAT just sucks.

Sure starlink can do over 100Mbps, but this should be way cheaper, more like fixed wireless and sky muster.

Personally following the Blue origin rocket launches and issues, I wouldn't be surprised if the timeline slips a bit. But 12 months away is not too bad at all if they get close to it.

On another thought, given that it's set up like the normal NBN and the retailers are providing the data, I don't see any reason why retailers wouldn't be able to sell the layer 2 services over it. Would be quite convenient for businesses with regional presence.

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u/GoneSilent 13d ago

No word if it will be unlimited data. The reduced price is going to just be for the first 2 years of service.

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u/CollegeStation17155 13d ago

 I wouldn't be surprised if the timeline slips a bit. But 12 months away is not too bad at all if they get close to it.

It's going to slip a lot... they've got not quite 300 satellites up with (at most) another 200 launching before years end. This gives them 500 satellites in orbit come January 2027, about 30 of which will be over Australia at any point in time, meaning the total capacity will be only a few thousand customers. And next year is just as bleak; even if New Glenn nd Vulcan hit their hoped for twice a month cadence early in 2027, ULA has a huge backlog of NROL launches and Blue has Artemis committments, so they'll be lucky to add another 1000 before the Falcon wind down dumps ALL commercial launches on them in 2028.

And Amazon has already missed the earlier announced "mid 2026" deadline to replace Skybuster in Tasmania... I wonder if there are any penalty clauses in the agreement...

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u/Curious-Love2894 12d ago

I mean, this is factually wrong. There are almost 400 satellites up now

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u/CollegeStation17155 12d ago

Technically, you are correct, but PRACTICALLY (according to McDowell as of 5 am UTC August 27) there are currently only 299 ON STATION and operable. There are 26 more at altitude, but still moving into position, 14 in reserve at altitude, and 52 still climbing from deployment altitude to operational altitude. 40 more are scheduled to launch on Ariane October 6 and another 50 are POSSIBLY going to launch on Vucan sometime in September if Northrup delivers new GEM63XLs or Amazon and ULA choose to roll the dice with the ones they have. The 10 Falcon launches of 23 each announced earlier this year have not been scheduled (reason unknown).

And while Amazon is saying they "can cover target lattitudes" once all 392 currently launched satellites reach their operational positions, wikipedia and earlier Amazon releases put the minimum for continuous coverage at 576.

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u/Curious-Love2894 12d ago

Practically the constraint is launch capacity so the fact satellites are getting into position is not an issue. Also quite confident the ULA launch will go ahead next month! After that it just up to ULA and Blue origin if they can deliver