Amazon’s Kuiper poised to challenge Starlink’s satellite broadband crown: Barclays

Investing.com -- Amazon’s Project Kuiper may be the underdog against SpaceX’s Starlink today in the satellite broadband race, but a ramped-up launch schedule and tight AWS integration put Kuiper on a clear path to challenge Starlink’s lead, Barclays analysts said in a recent note.

“We see Kuiper’s accelerating launch schedule and AWS backbone as strong enablers for Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) to compete effectively with Starlink, especially as Kuiper scales toward full commercial service,” the analysts said.

While Starlink boasts more than 6 million global users, with 2 million in the US alone, Kuiper is closing the gap, with 285 satellites expected in orbit by year-end and commercial rollout planned by the first half of 2026 at the earliest.

Kuiper’s innovative “half-duplex” terminal design delivers higher throughput in a smaller, lighter footprint than Starlink, which Barclays expects to translate to significantly lower manufacturing costs.

Beyond consumer broadband, Barclays highlights Kuiper’s growing opportunities in maritime and government markets, where Starlink already has a strong foothold with 75,000 active vessels and emerging government contracts. Maritime, in particular, presents fertile ground for Kuiper.

"Outside of consumer, especially early on, we now view maritime as potentially the larger opportunity of the two for the Kuiper," the analysts added.

Kuiper’s tight integration with Amazon’s AWS infrastructure is expected to boost latency and performance—a potential edge over Starlink’s more standalone network architecture. This cloud backbone, combined with Amazon’s vast ecosystem, positions Kuiper uniquely in the satellite internet race.

Starlink, however, continues, strengthen its offering, recently improving latency to 8% below the US wireless median after infrastructure upgrades, and eyes a 1H26 deployment of its next-gen V3 satellites with over 10x bandwidth gains—though that depends on the successful development of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.

With both Starlink and Kuiper targeting lucrative maritime and government sectors while competing for a growing consumer base, the satellite internet market looks set for intensifying competition and rapid technological advances benefiting underserved areas worldwide.

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Amazon’s Kuiper poised to challenge Starlink’s satellite broadband crown: Barclays

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