Colorado awards Amazon $25.4 million to provide satellite internet to areas with poor service

[Nittersing]

Amazon also captured 44% of the state’s locations with poor internet service. With two-thirds of states submitting final BEAD proposals by deadline, Colorado ranks 2nd highest so far for share of awards to satellite providers Amazon or Starlink.

"Approximately 44% of Colorado’s eligible households with subpar or no internet access are primed to get satellite broadband service from a company that doesn’t offer it yet: Amazon.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which is in the process of sending 3,200 satellites to low earth orbit, was preliminarily awarded $25.4 million in federal funds from the Colorado Broadband Office in a final proposal submitted last week. It’s part of the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment program, which Congress approved in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Act.

Officials from Amazon declined to comment. But they shared a letter sent to the National Telecommunications Information Administration last fall about why its low earth orbit, or LEO, internet service should be a viable option at a time states were in the process of picking fiber-internet companies for their BEAD program.

“Because satellite operators need not lay miles of fiber to connect customers in remote areas, a defining advantage of LEO broadband is that it costs little more to deliver service to remote corners of Montana than to a customer standing in Times Square,” said the letter signed by Kuiper Sysftems’ corporate counsel Christopher Cook."

https://coloradosun.com/2025/09/11/colorado-awards-amazon-satellite-internet-bead/

[greyl]

1. More customers for Amazon, should be a loan at most.

This stinks.

[Nittersing]

2. State media. I'm sure Bezos is happy to play along. nt

[durenus]

3. Waste money

It seems inefficient and wasteful to continually fund satellite replacements every year for internet service, especially when investing once in fiber optic infrastructure could provide a solution with a service life exceeding 100 years."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Laying fibre optic cable to remote locations is very expensive. Much more money than satellites

Where the satellites are wasteful is light pollution and orbital debris.

[hunter]

6. "Last mile" service can be fixed wireless.

Even so, my great grandparent's ranch, which is still about as far away as you can get from a WalMart in the 48 States, got both a telephone and electric service in FDR's New Deal.

Installing fiber is easy compared to that.

Satellites pollute the air when they are launched. And they pollute the air, oceans, and land when they are disposed of.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Welcome to DU. . . nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Welcome to DU