Amazon gets nod for small land in New Zealand for ‘Project Kuiper’ – report
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Alex Wong
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) receives approval to buy a 500-square-meter site at an undisclosed location in New Zealand for the internet from space project, Bloomberg reported.
The Overseas Investment Office in Wellington, New Zealand, said that Amazon (AMZN) will install and run the telecommunications equipment on the land. The consent was granted in July, the report said.
The site has been established to carry out the local operations of the project, and the equipment installed will be used to provide broadband services to customers in New Zealand, the Overseas Investment Office said.
This move is a step forward for the e-commerce giant’s ambitious ‘Project Kuiper’, a $10B project to launch satellites into low Earth orbit and provide high-speed broadband to underserved communities worldwide.
‘Project Kuiper’ will compete with other satellite internet initiatives like Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPACE) Starlink, which has already launched satellites and is providing service to remote communities in Brazil.
Amazon’s (AMZN) expansion into New Zealand highlights the company’s global scale of the satellite internet initiative.
The e-commerce giant hopes to launch its first satellites before this year-end. It expects to begin first customer tests in 2025 and launch a commercial service later in the year.