August 21, 2025 • 11 mins
Earlier this month, NBN Co announced it’s partnering with US tech giant Amazon to bring high speed satellite broadband to regional Australia. It’s called Project Kuiper.
Joe Lathan is Amazon's Country Manager for Project Kuiper, and he speaks with Michael Thompson about the scale of the project, what it will mean for competition more broadly - and whether Amazon might use its own rockets to put Kuiper satellites into space.
Fear & Greed Q+A: Join the team as they answer questions on business, investing, economics, politics and more. If you have your own question, get in touch via our website, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook!
Find out more: https://fearandgreed.com.au/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Fear and Greed Q and A where we
ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more.
I'm Michael Thompson and today how will the deal between
nbn CO and Amazon change the way we connect in
this country now? Earlier this month, nbn CO announced it's
partnering with US tech giant Amazon to bring high speed
satellite internet to regional Australia. It is called Project Kuiper
(00:29):
and Joe Lathan is Amazon's country manager for Project Kaiper.
Here's my guest this morning, Joe. Welcome to Fear and
Greed Q and.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
A thank you Michael. Great to be here. This is a.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Big deal for nbn CO to be partnering with a
company like Amazon. Set the scene for me first, because
this is going to replace NBNCo's Skymaster satellites that have
been giving satellite access for regional rural Australia for I
think the last decade or so. A decade ago it
was probably great technology. A decade ahead, it is not
(00:59):
so great. What kind of speeds are people in rural
regional areas getting at the moment.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
So at the moment the speeds can be fifty twenty
five to fifty megabits per second. But what's moved on
is the technology around the latency. So the satellites that
are serving customers in the regional areas today are in
what we call geostationary orbit, so they're thirty five thirty
six thousand kilometers above the Earth, and that means the
(01:28):
signal takes around six hundred million seconds to get there
and back down again. What we're bringing with LEO low
Earth orbit satellites is they're much closer to the Earth,
so those customers in the future will be able to
get much lower latency services typically takes about thirty milliseconds,
which is much faster than we even blink our eye,
(01:48):
So it's going to be a lot lower latency as
well as faster speeds that we'll be bringing with our
new satellite technology.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I suppose it's easy just to think in terms of
the overall kind of download and upload speeds, but really
you do need to be looking at that at the
latency as well, and the fact that these are entirely
different types of satellites, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yes, that's exactly right. So what NBN launched ten years
ago or so was two satellites as I say, a
long way above the Earth. What we're launching as Kuiper
is over three two hundred satellites. Now, these satellites are
around six hundred kilometers above the Earth and they will
orbit the Earth, you know, in constellations that bring essentially
(02:28):
a mesh network around the Earth, and these will travel
over Australia bringing services. And this low earth orbit satellite
technology means that the signal is only going up six
hundred kilometers, it's I say, thirty to fifty milliseconds, which
allows you to do all the things that we take
for granted, like you and I talking on a video
(02:50):
link now, with six hundred milliseconds of latency, that would
be stuttering and starting and we wouldn't be able to
talk to each other.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But with what we're.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Bringing with low latency, it means our conversation is seamless,
and video calling, gaming, all of those things that people
perhaps in the cities would take for granted haven't been
available to people in the most rural and remote plants
of Australia. And with what we're bringing, they'll be all
do you do those things?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And the figure that I saw was something like three
hundred thousand kind of properties customers potentially will benefit from this,
and it's not just I suppose the ability to work
from home or the ability to play games and things. Connectivity,
particularly in rural and regional areas, is absolutely vital for
just safety.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yes, it's absolutely critical.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
And I've spent a long time going out to parts
of regional Australia around Gilgandra in New South Wales and
talking to customers, talking to families where you know, one
teenage child is trying to study online, the other wants
to stream Netflix or do something and they can't do
both at the same time, so the families having to
(03:58):
make trade off as to who's doing what. And you know,
with the service that we'll be bringing, it would be like,
you know, everyone can do what they want. I think
it's you know, it's from examples like that, but out
sort of in regional Queensland talking to farmers who are
trying to run a business and they're not getting great connectivity. Today,
(04:19):
I spoke to one farmer that needs to drive up
to the top of the hill on their farm, which
they've now named Zoom Hill because it's the only place
they could get enough connectivity to to do Zoom calls
with their accountant, with their suppliers and do all of
the things they need to run their business. So it's
it's work, it's education, it's it's health, it's it's telehealth.
(04:42):
You know, ironically, the people that live furthest from you know,
health care providers and would benefit most from telehealth can't
use it if they've got poor connectivity. So you know,
to your point around safety, it's you know, it's very
much across a whole spectrum of things which you know,
if you live in towns and cities you tend to
take for granted, but people living out in these more
(05:05):
rural communities just they can't do today. And this is
what we're bringing Project Kaiper to Australia to solve those problems.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Well, I want to ask you and that the space
enthusiast in me is just is desperate to ask you
more about the launchers and the satellites. But I'm curious
why Amazon in this case, because we've got Starlink, which
is owned and operator by SpaceX. It's already well established
in the area and there are services available through Starlink
for regional and rural Australia. NBNC is effectively partnering almost
(05:33):
with the challenger in this space. So what is it
that Amazon is bringing here that has presented this path
forward for NBNC.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, so Amazons set out on this journey back in
twenty nineteen. They could see that across the globe there
are billions of people living communities that aren't served by
traditional technologies. And it takes an organization of the scale
of Amazon to invest and you know, this investment to
launch the constellation of satellites I talked about, it's around
(06:03):
ten billion US dollars or fifteen billion Australian dollars. So
it's a huge investment, and it takes a company like
Amazon that's prepared to make long term investments because it
could see an opportunity to serve customers that weren't served previously.
So bringing that to Australia and working with NBN, we
(06:24):
see a great opportunity to partner in that mission to
connect unserved or underserved communities. What Kuiper can bring is
a state of the art, you know, high performance broadband
network that's being built globally and will benefit Australians with
NBN that have the capability to connect very rural and
(06:47):
remote communities. They work with retail service providers to provide
those services, and we think that's a really powerful combination
that will you know, it'll absolutely revolutionize the experien into the.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Life of people in these communities.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
What about the flow on effect then, because we are
talking mostly about rural and regional communities, but having another
big player in the business like Amazon through Project Kiper
partnering with NBN, it's got to be good for competition,
it's got to be good for prices. More broadly in
this space.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
It will definitely be great for Australians. So the deal
that we announced recently with NBN was specifically around replacing
their Skymaster services. Amazon will be bringing Kyper services to Australia.
More generally, customers will be able to buy direct from Kuiper.
The network we are building has the flexibility, capacity, performance
(07:43):
to serve many different types of customers, whether that's you know,
residential customers all the way up through enterprises, government agencies.
You know, it's a very flexible network and we'll be
bringing services to benefit homes, businesses, enterprises, government agencies is
right across Australia.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So that for me is the really exciting part of this, Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
How many you mentioned was a three thousand, two hundred
satellites will be part of the network. How many are
in space at the moment.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
So we had a launch just recently that was our
fourth successful launch in just under four months. That's taken
the number of satellites to just over one hundred, So
one hundred and two up there now. And from this
point forward, our production facilities in the US are ramping
up our production. We've got a processing plant down in
(08:34):
Florida that takes all those satellites and puts them on
the launch vehicles, and then we've got a launch program
with a number of different launch providers. Now Amazon's investment
has been the biggest investment commercial launch of satellites globally ever,
so it's a huge, huge undertaking. But from here on in,
(08:55):
you know, every time we launch more satellites, we're just
building the capacity, seeing the capability of this network. So
really exciting time to be part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Absolutely in four in four months, it's that's quite a
pace to be kind of keeping up in terms of
the number of launchers and the number of satellites to
get into space. And I did see a full disclosure
I've watched a number of these launchers now because I
find them fascinating, and some of them are done using
SpaceX aircraft, aren't they. So there is still an element
(09:26):
of cooperation. I know it's a commercial arrangement, but it
is kind of amusing that that Amazon Kyper Projects Kiper
satellites are being put into space by SpaceX. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yes, yeah, I mean SpaceX is a is a launch
service provider, like like other partners we work with. Our
first two launches were with ULA United Launch Alliance on
their on their Atlas five rocket, and the recent launch
was with a SpaceX Fulcon nine rocket. So there's there's
many providers out there, and you know, we're we're using
(09:58):
a range of providers to to get the capacity to
launch the number of satellites we want to be launching
over the next few years.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
This might be something that you're not able to answer,
but are there plans at any point for Amazon to
be launching itself in terms of because we know that
there is the Blue Origin spacecraft etc. That is all
kind of connected in with Amazon and Jeff Bezos, is
their potential for Project Kiper satellites to be going into
space using an Amazon built and owned spacecraft.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
So there's nothing I can disclose in terms of timing,
but obviously we're talking to Blue Origin as well as
other providers. Yeah, it'd be nice thing to see, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
It'd be fantastic exciting times. Joe, thank you for talking
to Fear and Greed.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
No problem, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That was Joe Lathan, Amazon's country manager for Project Kiper.
If you've got something that you would like to know,
a question that you would like to put to us,
then please send it through on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or
at Fearangreed.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Dot com dot au.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I'm Michael Thompson and this is Fear and Greed Q
and A
Welcome to Fear and Greed Q and A where we
ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more.
I'm Michael Thompson and today how will the deal between
nbn CO and Amazon change the way we connect in
this country now? Earlier this month, nbn CO announced it's
partnering with US tech giant Amazon to bring high speed
satellite internet to regional Australia. It is called Project Kuiper
(00:29):
and Joe Lathan is Amazon's country manager for Project Kaiper.
Here's my guest this morning, Joe. Welcome to Fear and
Greed Q and.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
A thank you Michael. Great to be here. This is a.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Big deal for nbn CO to be partnering with a
company like Amazon. Set the scene for me first, because
this is going to replace NBNCo's Skymaster satellites that have
been giving satellite access for regional rural Australia for I
think the last decade or so. A decade ago it
was probably great technology. A decade ahead, it is not
(00:59):
so great. What kind of speeds are people in rural
regional areas getting at the moment.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
So at the moment the speeds can be fifty twenty
five to fifty megabits per second. But what's moved on
is the technology around the latency. So the satellites that
are serving customers in the regional areas today are in
what we call geostationary orbit, so they're thirty five thirty
six thousand kilometers above the Earth, and that means the
(01:28):
signal takes around six hundred million seconds to get there
and back down again. What we're bringing with LEO low
Earth orbit satellites is they're much closer to the Earth,
so those customers in the future will be able to
get much lower latency services typically takes about thirty milliseconds,
which is much faster than we even blink our eye,
(01:48):
So it's going to be a lot lower latency as
well as faster speeds that we'll be bringing with our
new satellite technology.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I suppose it's easy just to think in terms of
the overall kind of download and upload speeds, but really
you do need to be looking at that at the
latency as well, and the fact that these are entirely
different types of satellites, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yes, that's exactly right. So what NBN launched ten years
ago or so was two satellites as I say, a
long way above the Earth. What we're launching as Kuiper
is over three two hundred satellites. Now, these satellites are
around six hundred kilometers above the Earth and they will
orbit the Earth, you know, in constellations that bring essentially
(02:28):
a mesh network around the Earth, and these will travel
over Australia bringing services. And this low earth orbit satellite
technology means that the signal is only going up six
hundred kilometers, it's I say, thirty to fifty milliseconds, which
allows you to do all the things that we take
for granted, like you and I talking on a video
(02:50):
link now, with six hundred milliseconds of latency, that would
be stuttering and starting and we wouldn't be able to
talk to each other.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But with what we're.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Bringing with low latency, it means our conversation is seamless,
and video calling, gaming, all of those things that people
perhaps in the cities would take for granted haven't been
available to people in the most rural and remote plants
of Australia. And with what we're bringing, they'll be all
do you do those things?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And the figure that I saw was something like three
hundred thousand kind of properties customers potentially will benefit from this,
and it's not just I suppose the ability to work
from home or the ability to play games and things. Connectivity,
particularly in rural and regional areas, is absolutely vital for
just safety.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yes, it's absolutely critical.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
And I've spent a long time going out to parts
of regional Australia around Gilgandra in New South Wales and
talking to customers, talking to families where you know, one
teenage child is trying to study online, the other wants
to stream Netflix or do something and they can't do
both at the same time, so the families having to
(03:58):
make trade off as to who's doing what. And you know,
with the service that we'll be bringing, it would be like,
you know, everyone can do what they want. I think
it's you know, it's from examples like that, but out
sort of in regional Queensland talking to farmers who are
trying to run a business and they're not getting great connectivity. Today,
(04:19):
I spoke to one farmer that needs to drive up
to the top of the hill on their farm, which
they've now named Zoom Hill because it's the only place
they could get enough connectivity to to do Zoom calls
with their accountant, with their suppliers and do all of
the things they need to run their business. So it's
it's work, it's education, it's it's health, it's it's telehealth.
(04:42):
You know, ironically, the people that live furthest from you know,
health care providers and would benefit most from telehealth can't
use it if they've got poor connectivity. So you know,
to your point around safety, it's you know, it's very
much across a whole spectrum of things which you know,
if you live in towns and cities you tend to
take for granted, but people living out in these more
(05:05):
rural communities just they can't do today. And this is
what we're bringing Project Kaiper to Australia to solve those problems.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Well, I want to ask you and that the space
enthusiast in me is just is desperate to ask you
more about the launchers and the satellites. But I'm curious
why Amazon in this case, because we've got Starlink, which
is owned and operator by SpaceX. It's already well established
in the area and there are services available through Starlink
for regional and rural Australia. NBNC is effectively partnering almost
(05:33):
with the challenger in this space. So what is it
that Amazon is bringing here that has presented this path
forward for NBNC.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, so Amazons set out on this journey back in
twenty nineteen. They could see that across the globe there
are billions of people living communities that aren't served by
traditional technologies. And it takes an organization of the scale
of Amazon to invest and you know, this investment to
launch the constellation of satellites I talked about, it's around
(06:03):
ten billion US dollars or fifteen billion Australian dollars. So
it's a huge investment, and it takes a company like
Amazon that's prepared to make long term investments because it
could see an opportunity to serve customers that weren't served previously.
So bringing that to Australia and working with NBN, we
(06:24):
see a great opportunity to partner in that mission to
connect unserved or underserved communities. What Kuiper can bring is
a state of the art, you know, high performance broadband
network that's being built globally and will benefit Australians with
NBN that have the capability to connect very rural and
(06:47):
remote communities. They work with retail service providers to provide
those services, and we think that's a really powerful combination
that will you know, it'll absolutely revolutionize the experien into the.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Life of people in these communities.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
What about the flow on effect then, because we are
talking mostly about rural and regional communities, but having another
big player in the business like Amazon through Project Kiper
partnering with NBN, it's got to be good for competition,
it's got to be good for prices. More broadly in
this space.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
It will definitely be great for Australians. So the deal
that we announced recently with NBN was specifically around replacing
their Skymaster services. Amazon will be bringing Kyper services to Australia.
More generally, customers will be able to buy direct from Kuiper.
The network we are building has the flexibility, capacity, performance
(07:43):
to serve many different types of customers, whether that's you know,
residential customers all the way up through enterprises, government agencies.
You know, it's a very flexible network and we'll be
bringing services to benefit homes, businesses, enterprises, government agencies is
right across Australia.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So that for me is the really exciting part of this, Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
How many you mentioned was a three thousand, two hundred
satellites will be part of the network. How many are
in space at the moment.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
So we had a launch just recently that was our
fourth successful launch in just under four months. That's taken
the number of satellites to just over one hundred, So
one hundred and two up there now. And from this
point forward, our production facilities in the US are ramping
up our production. We've got a processing plant down in
(08:34):
Florida that takes all those satellites and puts them on
the launch vehicles, and then we've got a launch program
with a number of different launch providers. Now Amazon's investment
has been the biggest investment commercial launch of satellites globally ever,
so it's a huge, huge undertaking. But from here on in,
(08:55):
you know, every time we launch more satellites, we're just
building the capacity, seeing the capability of this network. So
really exciting time to be part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Absolutely in four in four months, it's that's quite a
pace to be kind of keeping up in terms of
the number of launchers and the number of satellites to
get into space. And I did see a full disclosure
I've watched a number of these launchers now because I
find them fascinating, and some of them are done using
SpaceX aircraft, aren't they. So there is still an element
(09:26):
of cooperation. I know it's a commercial arrangement, but it
is kind of amusing that that Amazon Kyper Projects Kiper
satellites are being put into space by SpaceX. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yes, yeah, I mean SpaceX is a is a launch
service provider, like like other partners we work with. Our
first two launches were with ULA United Launch Alliance on
their on their Atlas five rocket, and the recent launch
was with a SpaceX Fulcon nine rocket. So there's there's
many providers out there, and you know, we're we're using
(09:58):
a range of providers to to get the capacity to
launch the number of satellites we want to be launching
over the next few years.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
This might be something that you're not able to answer,
but are there plans at any point for Amazon to
be launching itself in terms of because we know that
there is the Blue Origin spacecraft etc. That is all
kind of connected in with Amazon and Jeff Bezos, is
their potential for Project Kiper satellites to be going into
space using an Amazon built and owned spacecraft.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
So there's nothing I can disclose in terms of timing,
but obviously we're talking to Blue Origin as well as
other providers. Yeah, it'd be nice thing to see, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
It'd be fantastic exciting times. Joe, thank you for talking
to Fear and Greed.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
No problem, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That was Joe Lathan, Amazon's country manager for Project Kiper.
If you've got something that you would like to know,
a question that you would like to put to us,
then please send it through on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or
at Fearangreed.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Dot com dot au.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I'm Michael Thompson and this is Fear and Greed Q
and A
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.