Ofcom Grant UK Licence for Amazon’s Project Kuiper Broadband Satellites

Ofcom has today grant Amazon’s Project Kuiper a UK Earth Station Network Licence (ESNL), which will support their effort to launch a global mega-constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to deliver affordable ultrafast broadband and mobile (4G, 5G) services. The UK telecoms regulator also made more spectrum available in the 28GHz and 32GHz bands.

Currently, Amazon are still in the progress of developing their service, which means that they’re trailing well behind established rivals like OneWeb (Eutelsat) and Starlink (SpaceX). Nevertheless, Amazon has approval to deploy their own constellation of 3,232 LEO satellites as part of Project Kuiper, which will sit at an altitude of between 590km and 630km. The system can process up to 1Tbps (Terabits per second) of data traffic on each satellite, albeit shared between many users.

Each of Amazon’s satellites are fairly small, but like Starlink they make up for that in quantity, and this approach typically delivers lots of data capacity (100-400Mbps broadband speeds), as well as relatively fast latency times (often c.20-40ms) and wide global coverage. But only provided it’s all matched by plenty of Ground Stations and regulatory approvals in supporting countries, which is where Ofcom comes in for the United Kingdom.

The announcement today essentially authorises Kuiper to operate user terminals in the Ka band in the UK and connect it to their satellites, which will be able to serve local homes, businesses and public sector sites.

Ofcom’s Decision in Brief

This decision will enable Kuiper to provide satellite connectivity services such as high speed, low latency broadband to a wide range of customers, and backhaul to businesses, using Ka band frequencies between 27.5-27.9405 GHz, 28.4545-28.9485 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz.

On coexistence, we consider that the Kuiper NGSO system is capable of coexisting with both existing NGSO licensees and future NGSO systems operating in the Ka band. Kuiper has provided evidence that coordination discussions with other NGSO licensees have commenced, and we encourage all parties to engage in these discussions and progress plans to cooperate ahead of the proposed launch of this service in 2025.

We also consider that Kuiper’s NGSO system is capable of coexisting with other services, including fixed links and geostationary orbit (GSO) satellite systems.

In addition, we assess that granting the licence will not create a material risk to competition, and that the proposed services would benefit UK consumers, customers, and citizens.

We will now proceed to issue Kuiper with an NGSO network licence to operate in Ka band frequencies 27.5-27.9405 GHz, 28.4545-28.9485 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz, subject to payment of the licence fee.

Amazon have already launched a couple of test satellites (here) and their first production satellites are due to be carried into orbit during early 2025. The first commercial beta testing is thus likely to follow during the latter half of 2025 (later than originally planned, although delays are not uncommon with space projects). But it will then take another 6 years to fully manufacture and launch their planned constellation, which takes us to around 2030.

Project Kuiper has so far secured 83 future launches on rockets from Arianespace, Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance, and they have options for additional launches with Blue Origin, providing enough capacity to deploy the majority of their satellite constellation. The project has yet to announced what sort of prices and packages consumers can expect from the service, but they’ll probably aim to be competitive with Starlink.

More Spectrum for Fixed Links and Satellite

Semi-separately, Ofcom has also today confirmed that they’re also releasing further radio spectrum in the 27.5-30GHz (28GHz) and 32GHz bands, which are known to be “particularly suitable for ‘fixed links’ and satellite connectivity services“. This not only aids Project Kuiper, but will also bring a capacity boost to other satellite and wireless broadband networks.

The regulator added that they would also decide how to make a further 2 x 112MHz of spectrum (27.9405-28.0525GHz paired with 29.9485-29.0605GHz) available “once we have further evidence on the uptake of spectrum made available through this initial set changes“.

Ofcom have also decided not to introduce a new process to directly authorise satellite gateways in 28GHz frequencies licensed to Spectrum Access licensees at this time. “This is because additional evidence we have received suggests it is reasonable to expect market mechanisms (the leasing of spectrum between parties) to lead to further sharing without our intervention“, said Ofcom, before warning that they may “revisit this again” if evidence shows their approach is not proving effective in enabling gateway access.

Nina Percival, Ofcom’s Director of Spectrum Management, said:

“In line with our mission to support innovation, investment and growth, today’s decisions provide further opportunity for new services delivering better connectivity for people and businesses in the UK – and particularly to those in harder to reach rural communities.”