Test of Amazon’s Initial Project Kuiper Broadband Satellites Hits 1.29Gbps

Online retail giant Amazon has conducted a speed test on their initial deployments of Project Kuiper broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which demonstrated a peak download speed hitting 1.29Gbps (Gigabits per second). But this is naturally on a new network, without any capacity strains (real-world load) from other users.

The company currently has approval to deploy and operate their own constellation of 3,236 LEO satellites as part of Project Kuiper and Amazon has already launched 104 satellites into orbit (altitudes of around 590km to 630km), including two of their initial prototypes. Each spacecraft can technically process data traffic at speeds of up to 1Tbps (Terabits per second), albeit shared between many users.

The good news this week is that the Head of Project Kuiper, Rajeev Badyal, recently helped to conduct an initial round of speed tests using their enterprise-grade customer terminal (more context on this below). The test clearly showed their ground-based setup hitting a download speed of 1.29Gbps, although the demo video cuts out before we see any results for upload performance.

The test, which naturally made use of Ookla’s Speedtest.net service, also displayed a real-world latency time of around 47-48ms (milliseconds), which is good and about what we were expecting for their first run of satellites and hardware at that altitude. This should improve a little as their network is refined, but there are limits to what can be done at such distances.

According to past information, the latency (often c.20-40ms) and speed of the new broadband service, once live, is expected to be similar to that of Starlink (SpaceX) and will similarly focus on reaching “unserved and underserved communities“.

Technical doc suggest that Project Kuiper’s smallest ultra-compact (7-inch square) ground terminals (pictured) are, for example, expected to support downloads of “up to” 100Mbps (Megabits), while their slightly larger standard model (11 inches square) delivers up to 400Mbps, and the largest model (19 inches) should be able to do up to 1Gbps (Gigabit per second). The latter is more intended for government and enterprise users (this is what was tested above).

Rajeev Badyal said (LinkedIn):

“>1 Gbps speeds from low Earth orbit.

With our first Amazon Project Kuiper satellites on station at 630 km, we’ve been able to put the network through its paces, and last week our team conducted another round of speed tests using our enterprise-grade customer terminal. The results speak for themselves.

For all the focus on our satellites, some of the biggest Kuiper inventions are on the customer terminal side of the house. The team set a high bar from the start, and as far as we know, this is the first commercial phased array antenna to deliver 1+ Gbps from low Earth orbit. We can’t wait to get it in the hands of our customers.

P.S. Uplink numbers generated as much excitement (if not more). We’ll save those for another day though…”

The first commercial beta services are currently still expected to kick off with a few initial users around the end of 2025, but it will be later in 2026 before it gets an early commercial launch in the USA. The service is due to come to the UK sometime within that period too, but Amazon has yet to confirm a clear launch date or any consumer pricing.