TeraWave is aimed to satisfy a rising demand for space-based communication in enterprise, knowledge facilities, and governments
In sum — what to know:
6 Tbps, wherever on Earth: Jeff Bezo’s house enterprise, Blue Origin, simply introduced TeraWave, a multi-orbit community that’s designed to ship as much as 6 Tbps symmetrical knowledge speeds wherever on Earth, notably in useless zones.
Not a client broadband service: Blue Origin positions TeraWave as a service for B2B customers — not the lots.
The larger constellation math: The corporate is seeking to put roughly 5,500 satellites in orbit beginning 2027, however the math doesn’t add up.
The SpaceX vs Amazon battle simply acquired extra attention-grabbing this week. In a transfer that took many abruptly, Jeff Bezos’ house enterprise, Blue Origin, dropped a brand new satellite tv for pc web service on Wednesday.
Dubbed TeraWave, the service is designed to ship high-speed, dependable connectivity to high-capacity customers, like enterprises, knowledge facilities, and governments.
What Blue Origin is basically providing
TeraWave’s new web page on the Blue Origin web site reads, “TeraWave provides a space-based layer to your current community infrastructure, offering connectivity to areas unreachable by conventional strategies,” which appears like normal satellite tv for pc fare — besides, TeraWave guarantees to supply formidable speeds of as much as 6 Tbps wherever on Earth, “notably in distant, rural, and suburban areas the place numerous fiber paths are expensive, technically infeasible, or gradual to deploy.”
The declare is backed by a colossal structure which contains a fleet of 5,280 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and 128 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites. Exactly, the constellation of LEO satellites will ship 144 Gbps speeds by way of Q/V-band hyperlinks, and 6Tbps, by way of optical hyperlinks.
“TeraWave makes use of a mixture of optical and Q/V-band RF communication hyperlinks to offer prospects with each point-to-point connectivity and enterprise-grade web entry,” the corporate advised RCR Wi-fi Information. “It gives the flexibleness to customise throughput and bodily presence dynamically in response to adjustments in prospects’ wants or availability of terrestrial connections.”
Blue Origin says it plans to start deploying the TeraWave constellation within the closing quarter of 2027, which really is sensible as Amazon itself is near launching Leo — previously Challenge Kuiper — which is a direct competitor of Starlink. Thus far, Leo has solely positioned 180 satellites in orbit, far under the focused 3,200, with a directive to launch roughly half that quantity by July of 2026.
And now with a good larger goal set with TeraWave, the deployment cadence must be terribly aggressive. The maths has left many uncertain.
In 2025, SpaceX twice launched over 21 Lockheed Martin satellites aboard the Falcon9 rocket for the SDA’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer (T1TL). “If we take Starlink 21 satellite tv for pc per launch ratio then that’s 257 launches,” stated Roger Entner, founder and analyst at Recon Analytics. “Add to the Amazon Leo launches — that’s an insane quantity of rockets that must be put collectively and launched! How do all these satellites go to house? There isn’t sufficient launch capability.”
The place does this go away Leo
The query that’s lingering in all people’s thoughts is: can TeraWave be a homegrown competitor for Leo? Though separate firms, each Amazon and Blue Planet are in any case owned by Jeff Bezos, and any overlap makes them doubtlessly competing merchandise.
It appears that evidently Blue Origin has tried to make clear it within the announcement. The corporate stated that TeraWave is designed to serve a small person base of roughly 10,000 versus hundreds of thousands.
On being requested how the 2 providers are completely different, the corporate responded, “TeraWave identifies an unmet want with prospects who had been in search of enterprise-grade web entry with larger speeds, symmetrical add/obtain speeds, extra redundancy, and fast scalability for his or her networks.”
The FCC submitting gives extra readability to this. The corporate wrote, “TeraWave is a logical development for Blue Origin,” indicating that it’s a long-term undertaking, representing a ahead motion towards superior communications infrastructure.
“TeraWave is developed to supply safe, high-capacity providers for presidency customers— civil, protection, and nationwide safety—wherever they function. These customers face among the most acute penalties from connectivity loss; downtime threat will not be tolerable, as loss or degradation of communications can hinder command and management, situational consciousness, humanitarian response, and continuity of vital operations. By combining international protection, excessive throughput, and versatile hyperlink architectures, TeraWave can ship resilient connectivity to authorities services and operations in distant or austere areas. These capabilities will assist be sure that authorities customers retain entry to safe, dependable communications even when terrestrial or subsea infrastructure is unavailable, degraded, or intentionally denied. In doing so, TeraWave will advance U.S nationwide and financial safety pursuits, and due to this fact, the general public curiosity.”
That stated, the query nonetheless stays whether or not TeraWave is meant to tackle Starlink? That appears unlikely, no less than for now. TeraWave seems to be positioned for a a lot smaller crowd, in comparison with Starlink that serves over 9 million subscribers worldwide.
Nonetheless, it’s price noting that there’s an overlap within the authorities phase, a market that Starlink presently serves with its protection model, Starshield. Which will introduce some competitors, however as Entner stated, by and enormous, “TeraWave appears to be targeted on B2B, whereas Starlink and Leo are extra B2C,” very like Telesat Lightspeed.
