Starlink vs Amazon LEO ?

[BitBangBro]

As it turns out, Starlink is soon about to get a compettition: Amazon's LEO.
What an apt name - LEO /Low Earth Orbit...

Yes, it's backed at the moment by far smaller satellite swarm (only 135), but it brings about at least two important changes:

• full-duplex communication wit the client. I..e just like wired Ethernet - ecah side can transmit while receiving and vice versa. This alone should do wonders for both bandwidth and latenncy.
• Much higher transfer speeds with one dish- 1000/400. Allegedly STarlink can get higher through multiple dishes and banwidth aggregation.
• Unlike Starlink, LEO doesn't just route client's traffic to the nearest terrestrial POP point, but through the satellite shel to its central terrestrial hub point. This brings all sorts of interestirng tradeoffs.

What I want to know how the hell did they pull the full-duplex trick off ? Is this normal for satcom, especially in a setup where one side uses small phased arrray gearr within a cheap, off-the-shelf equipment ?
How the hell do they get decent signal/noise ratio for that ?

Is this ever likely to compete with Starlink for mere mortals or will it remain just for uppper segments - like companiest etc ?

It seems that SpaceX has no plans to convert to full-duplex even after v3 hardware gets deployed.
I wonder why... 🙄

LEO is supposed to become operational for the public sometime in H1/2026...

[Psi]

I wouldn't say they are about to get competition. I mean it is technically true but they are so far behind SpaceX in terms of active satellites in orbit. And their ability to deploy large volumes of them at scale is currently non-existent. They have blue origin but they need a fleet of rockets launching weekly. They have some launches lined up with other companies but not enough until they get blue origin launching on a regular basis. 

I'm not entirely sure what to make of their 135 swam,  I'm sure you could cover the earth with that but the number customers you could serve is extremely small due to the bandwidth available per sat. They must be intending to keep expanding that because 135 is just too small to compete with Starlink in any meaningful way. I guess maybe it could compete with Starlink direct to cell SMS if they're doing that.

I'm sure they will become competition but it won't be for quite a while. Competition is always a good thing though so it's great to have another constellation being built. I'm not anti-Amazon LEO or anything. Maybe a little anti-Jeff Bezos but I want Amazon LEO to succeeded.

Any new tech Amazons come up with to try and improve their sats over Starlink has the disadvantage that SpaceX could probably integrate that same tech into their next gen Starlinks and deploy them before Amazon could use it themselves.
So I wouldn't get too excited too soon about any new tech that future Amazon LEO sats might have over current Starlinks. Amazon need to be designing the tech now to compete with the Starlink technology that will exists 5 years from now. Which is tricky considering how bleeding edge SpaceX likes to roll.

[jjoonathan]

Yep I'm glad to see them start and I'm cheering on the competition but they have a long hill to climb

https://satellitemap.space/