Blue Origin’s Starlink rival TeraWave promises 6-terabit satellite internet

SpaceX has the most internet-beaming satellites in its constellation, but the competition is coming, and now Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, has announced the TeraWave network. It says TeraWave will offer bandwidth of up to 6Tb available anywhere on Earth, for both upload and download.

The only wrinkle? Even after satellite deployments are scheduled to start near the end of 2027, you probably won’t be able to connect directly. That’s by design, as former Amazon Alexa boss and current Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post that it’s “purpose-built for enterprise customers.”

Blue Origin’s network has a “multi-orbit” design of 5,408 optically connected satellites. While most of them will be in low-Earth orbit and connect to customers on the ground via regular wireless connections at up to 144Gbps, it will also have 128 satellites in medium-Earth orbit that offer the possibility of 6Tb bidirectional connections.

However, unlike Starlink and Amazon’s fledgling Leo satellite internet network, the company is planning to connect a maximum of about 100,000 customers, not millions, with plans to target “tens of thousands of enterprise, data center, and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations.” At the moment, Amazon is also looking at the enterprise sector with its Leo Ultra antennas that promise 1Gbps downloads and 400Mbps uploads, while Starlink is looking to roll out gigabit speeds this year.