Australians could soon be buying more than CE gadgets and appliances from Amazon after it was revealed that the NBN is set to sign a multimillion dollar deal that will see Amazon’s new Kuiper satellite network rolled out in Australia up against Elon Musk’s Starlink.
According to the AFR the NBN who already have a satellite offering are set to deliver Internet communication to rural and regional Australia using Amazon’s brand new network of Kuiper satellites, which ChannelNews revealed was in development two years ago.
Recently the NBN has been losing satellite customers to Musk’s Starlink service, with the new deal Australians will be able to get access to Kuiper low-earth orbit network of 3236 satellites, which is scheduled to be operational from 2026.
In the six months from August 2024 and January 2025, the number of the NBN run Sky Muster customers fell almost 5 per cent from 85,000 to just over 81,000. That’s down from about 109,000 in mid-2022.
The fall is due to a combination of factors, including more people getting access to NBN’s fixed wireless service or shifting to superior competitors such as Starlink.
Due to the fact that contracts are still to be executed the final decision could come down to a new Federal Government with elections tipped to be called this week.
Kuiper satellite dishes
According to the AFR this is the first time NBN Co has entered into a major long-term third-party arrangement for services, and the details will need to be signed off by NBN Co’s shareholder ministers, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland.NBN chief executive Ellie Sweeney told a Senate committee last week that she expects to announce a deal soon.
“We would not be building our own LEO [low earth orbit] satellite. We would be utilising the low earth orbit capability of one of the other global providers,” she said, but declined to say which companies had expressed interest in providing the service.
The move could result in CE retailers such as JB Hi Fi who were selling Starlink dishes, in select stores moving to expand their sale of Amazon services to include Kuiper dishes in the future.
Amazon said last year that Australia would be one of the first countries offered access to its new Kuiper satellites with Amazon executives telling ChannelNews at CES that speeds of up to 500 to 1,000mps could be feasible in the future via the Kuiper network.
Rowland and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in January announced a $3 billion equity injection into NBN Co to extend faster fibre connections to the doors of most homes and businesses in Australia.
The funding will give an additional 622,000 premises the option of full fibre access – as opposed to fibre to a node in the street and copper for the final stretch – at an average cost to NBN Co of about $6000 each.
The only problem is that new build houses in metro areas are still unable to get access to NBN fibre to the premises.
The funding brings taxpayers’ stake in NBN to about $35 billion, an amount that is unlikely to ever be fully recouped after Labor backflipped on its original plan to privatise the network.
