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“The selection process was a long, grueling and grueling process, it took days to open the hood and see what was underneath,” Harry O’Hanley, CEO of ABL, said in an interview. “I would say they’ve gone as deep or deeper as we’ve seen a company go before.”
The Amazon prototype pair of satellites will test internet connections between space and the company’s flat, square antennas for consumers on the ground for the first time in Amazon’s Kuiper program. Test sites include South America, the Asia-Pacific region, and Central Texas. Past experiments have included flying satellite-equipped drones over ground antennas and connecting ground antennas to other companies’ satellites already in space, pulling up internet speeds fast enough to stream high-definition video.
Like other parts of Amazon’s appliance business, employees at Kuiper are facing pressure to cut costs as the company develops the final version of its consumer antenna. Mr Badyal said the company is considering either charging customers for the antenna and any cables that come with it, or giving the antenna free to customers in an “extreme” situation.
“We’re extremely focused on reducing cost, so the total cost of ownership for customers is low,” he said, adding that engineers have been updating the antenna design since Amazon unveiled it last year. “When you build satellites, you don’t have to count pennies, but when you build a customer terminal, we count pennies and sub cents.”
The penny count comes from the playbook of the device unit Amazon has experience in producing consumer electronics like Alexa smart speakers and Fire sticks for TV streaming.
a conference Last month, Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, cited the Kuiper project as an example of the company’s efforts to innovate despite its growth. He said Amazon needed a “blind belief” that it could unravel complex new technology. But he added: “In the way you intend to use it and what the customer experience will be, you have to make sure that customers will embrace it and find it easy and attractive enough to use.”
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