As Starlink faces hurdles, Amazon launches competitor in Africa

Vodafone and Amazon are engaged on Project Kuiper satellite tv for pc web service, a competitor to Starlink in Africa.

Vodafone and Project Kuiper, Amazon’s Low Earth Orbit satellite tv for pc (LEO) communications initiative, in the present day, September 5, 2023, introduced a collaboration to make use of Project Kuiper’s community to increase the attain of 4G/5G providers to extra of their clients in Europe and Africa.

Project Kuiper claims to attach geographically dispersed mobile antennas again to the businesses’ core telecom networks. This means Vodafone and Vodacom will probably be ready provide 4G/5G providers in extra areas with out the time and expense of constructing out fibre-based or fastened wi-fi hyperlinks again to the core networks.

Shameel Joosup, CEO of Vodacom Group mentioned “collaborating with Project Kuiper gives us an exciting new path to scale our efforts, using Amazon’s satellite constellation to quickly reach more customers across the African continent.”

 The Vodacom group plans to make use of Project Kuiper’s high-bandwidth, low-latency satellite tv for pc community to deliver the advantages of 4G/5G connectivity to areas which will in any other case be difficult and prohibitively costly to serve by way of conventional fibre or microwave options. Amazon expects to start beta testing Project Kuiper providers with choose clients by the top of 2024, and Vodafone and Vodacom plan to take part in that testing by way of this collaboration.

The partnership comes at an fascinating time when Starlink, a competitor to Project Kuiper, has been experiencing regulatory pushback, significantly in southern Africa. South Africa has banned the import, reselling and utilization of the service, Zimbabwe has warned in opposition to the service, citing licensing whereas Botswana states that the service is but to get the requisite licensing regardless of planning to launch in the nation in Q3 2023.

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