I really think that people want to
live in nature. They want
live in nature, they want
to be out in the mountains. They
want to be where they play.
This is Cle Elum.
It's kind of a little hole.
So it feels
very off-grid, which is great, why a
lot of people move over here.
The assumptions that we didn't have
money to afford internet
was not the case at all.
- People come out here enjoying
all the outdoors, whether it be
snowmobiling, mountain biking,
off roading.
- Quite a few people move out to this
area because it's gorgeous, but
people are reluctant to
open small businesses
due to the lack of reliable internet.
- We've lived here for almost
30 years. The little community
that we're in is trying very hard to
get decent
internet, but it's
it's, hard.
hard.
- There are two or three things I want
to say at the beginning.
This is a rare opportunity.
You know, the impact that Project
Kuiper has on the lives of people
is really unprecedented at the scale.
- About half the world's population
lack connectivity
or access to good connectivity.
And we know what a difference that
internet connectivity can make in
people's lives.
Access to shopping.
Access to health care.
Access to education.
- You have to ask yourself,
why aren't the rural areas connected?
And the answer is very simple:
it's not cost effective.
It would have been done by now, but
it isn't.
- Project Kuiper is setting out to
extend high-quality broadband
internet access by implementing
a constellation of satellites
in low Earth orbit.
3,236 satellites.
- The Kuiper constellation is
ultimately going to serve a variety
of customers: residential broadband
customers, small and medium
businesses and enterprises.
We need to be able to deliver
connectivity all over the world in
a very short period of time.
- Even just right here in our
backyard, right outside Redmond.
There are areas where
there is no internet connection
or extraordinarly poor connection,
and we can make a huge impact like
right away.
- I've been a council member for four years.
My family's five generations from
Roslyn, Washington and Cle Elum.
We have one option for internet
over here.
You know, it'd be great to see a
different service come in to see if
that would increase the
availability, the reliability
of it. There's no doubt that there's
a hindrance of growth in our area
due to lack of constant internet.
- So this is kind of the hub of town.
We have been here 20 years, so
if anyone's coming over I-90,
they're going to stop here, refuel
and they're going to check their
messages, they're going to check
their emails.
- I'm downloading movies so I can take it
home and watch it.
- Yeah, I'm shopping.
So we have zero internet right now.
- And when we do, it's
.76 megabytes per second.
And how much do we pay a month?
- About almost 80 dollars a month.
-.76 megabytes per second.
- Having a family cafe, people come
to work and do their homework,
but we can't have people
here in the cafe, zooming
and calls and then somebody else
trying to download a big file.
- People across the planet are
traveling from miles and miles away
just so they can access internet.
So then you pull back and you say,
'how do we get these folks connected?'
And the right technology to do that
is satellites.
Typically big satellites go into
the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometers.
- The MEO satellites are anywhere
between 2,000 and 35,000 kilometers
off the surface of the Earth.
Kuiper is operating down
around 600 kilometers off
the surface of the Earth.
- If we were flying higher,
then we can have fewer.
But the latency would be higher.
- Being able to go out and deliver
access to the internet to people who
don't have it today, you can't
really imagine how this is going to
better people's lives and how it's
going to better people around the world.
- We often get our cell towers
going down.
A couple of years ago, we did have
an incident where I had to call
9-1-1 for myself.
I was, I kept passing out and I was
extremely pregnant and my internet
was not fast enough, so I had to
wander around till I could find
help. Which ended up kind of being a
help, which ended up kind of being a
scary situation.
- Existing broadband providers and
cellular providers, they can use
Kuiper to be able to put a cellular
tower in a place that's currently a
dead zone. Where right now they may
not have any other option available
to them, and we can go close those
gaps in cellular service all over
the globe.
- My youngest was a junior in high
school and without having
any internet access at home, he
would sit in his car trying to
get access.
Businesses around here
would offer their parking lot for
kids to sit and do their classwork,
and that was the only way he was
able to graduate high school.
- When COVID first
hit, I was
just struggling with leaving the
kids outside in the cold.
These are just great kids trying to
do third grade math.
So we turn our space
that was once a bar into a speakeasy
internet cafe.
- The COVID pandemic, it reiterated
to me why the work we
are doing is so important.
- A kid in the middle of a continent,
I really want them to have the same
quality of internet access that my
kids are enjoying at home.
There really should be no
difference, I feel really driven
about it, if you can't tell.
- To get the normal internet:
2 download, 5 upload, it's still
$70 a month, and that is
one of the big reasons why the kids
came, because not all
of them honestly, could afford it.
of them honestly could afford it.
- Affordability is job one for us.
Affordability is job one for us.
That's really important for us to
keep that cost low, because if we
don't, then it's very difficult to
get the unserved and underserved
connected to our service.
So we took on the challenge to
design our satellites two orders
of magnitude cheaper.
- We have to build everything
We have to build everything
really kind of from the ground up.
- We're designing the solar arrays.
We're designing the reaction wheels.
- Satellite constellation management systems.
Thermal solution.
- Unique and bespoke networking.
- Engineering, manufacturing,
you name it.
It takes a village.
- It's not very often in your lives
that you get an opportunity to work
on something that has an impact on
people's life at an unprecedented
scale.
- I mean, how often do you get a
chance to join a project,
you know, to make that extent
of an impact?
- The complexity is enormous,
but we are up to the challenge
because of the team we have.