Ofcom UK Grant Gateway Licence for Amazon’s Project Kuiper Broadband Network
The UK communications regulator, Ofcom, has today granted a new gateway licence for Amazon’s future Project Kuiper network. The move supports the retail giant’s effort to launch a global mega-constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which will deliver affordable ultrafast broadband and mobile (4G, 5G) services to rival Starlink (SpaceX).
Amazon is already well into the early process of launching its global mega-constellation of 3,236 compact satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – sitting at an altitude of between 590km and 630km – and they’ve already won several other related licences for this (here). The first commercial (beta) services are currently expected to get underway by around March 2026 (here).
The latest announcement grants the project an NGSO Earth Station Licence for a terrestrial gateway site in Bude (Cornwall), which is needed in order to help Kuiper provide “high-speed, low-latency broadband services” to households, businesses and other customers in the UK, as well as backhaul connectivity to telecommunications carriers.
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This decision will enable Kuiper to operate a satellite gateway to provide satellite connectivity services in the UK to households, businesses and other customers, as well as backhaul connectivity services, using Ka band frequencies between 27.5-27.9505 GHz, 28.4445-28.9585 GHz and 29.4525-30 GHz.
On coexistence, we consider that Kuiper has provided the necessary evidence to show that its NGSO gateway should be capable of coexisting with current and future NGSO systems and gateway earth stations in the Ka band in the UK, and are assured that its NGSO system is designed with sufficient flexibility to mitigate harmful interference should it arise. We are also satisfied that Kuiper has provided suitable evidence of coordination discussions with other NGSO licensees and that it intends to continue its efforts to cooperate with other licensees.
In addition, we assess that the competition risks from approving Kuiper’s application for an NGSO gateway licence are low, and that the proposed gateway site would benefit UK consumers, customers and citizens.
We will now proceed to issue Kuiper with an NGSO gateway licence to operate in Ka band frequencies 27.5-27.9505 GHz, 28.4445- 28.9585 GHz and 29.4525-30 GHz, subject to payment of the licence fee. A copy of the licence will also be available under the “Existing licences” section of our NGSO licensing webpage.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Tax them not give them more profits.
“Tax them not give them more profits.”
Amazon paid ~£1B in corporation tax in the UK but most people don’t realise that the business is essentially an infrastructure play.
Amazon doesn’t generate huge profits to be taxed because it’s invested massively in infrastructure and continues to do so.
Heavy investment = low profit = low tax. It’s not unlike the Pharmaceutical companies when they are discovering and developing medicines – for anything up to 25 years the investment returns a loss. Same again for the alt nets – years of no profit whilst they build their networks.
Aside from the corporation tax Amazon UK remitted ~£4.8B in other taxes last year.
Some welcome competition for Musksat then.
A terrestrial gateway site in Bude.
Right next door to GCHQ’s interception station.
Presumably they (i.e. GCHQ) will be interposing a “hoover” into the back-haul fibre circuits, to suck up all of the end-user traffic for meta-data analysis?