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Speaker 1: Welcome to Fear and Greed Q and A where we

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Speaker 1: ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more.

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Speaker 1: I'm Michael Thompson and today how will the deal between

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Speaker 1: nbn CO and Amazon change the way we connect in

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Speaker 1: this country now? Earlier this month, nbn CO announced it's

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Speaker 1: partnering with US tech giant Amazon to bring high speed

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Speaker 1: satellite internet to regional Australia. It is called Project Kuiper

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Speaker 1: and Joe Lathan is Amazon's country manager for Project Kaiper.

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Speaker 1: Here's my guest this morning, Joe. Welcome to Fear and

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Speaker 1: Greed Q and.

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Speaker 2: A thank you Michael. Great to be here. This is a.

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Speaker 1: Big deal for nbn CO to be partnering with a

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Speaker 1: company like Amazon. Set the scene for me first, because

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Speaker 1: this is going to replace NBNCo's Skymaster satellites that have

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Speaker 1: been giving satellite access for regional rural Australia for I

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Speaker 1: think the last decade or so. A decade ago it

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Speaker 1: was probably great technology. A decade ahead, it is not

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Speaker 1: so great. What kind of speeds are people in rural

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Speaker 1: regional areas getting at the moment.

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Speaker 3: So at the moment the speeds can be fifty twenty

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Speaker 3: five to fifty megabits per second. But what's moved on

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Speaker 3: is the technology around the latency. So the satellites that

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Speaker 3: are serving customers in the regional areas today are in

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Speaker 3: what we call geostationary orbit, so they're thirty five thirty

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Speaker 3: six thousand kilometers above the Earth, and that means the

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Speaker 3: signal takes around six hundred million seconds to get there

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Speaker 3: and back down again. What we're bringing with LEO low

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Speaker 3: Earth orbit satellites is they're much closer to the Earth,

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Speaker 3: so those customers in the future will be able to

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Speaker 3: get much lower latency services typically takes about thirty milliseconds,

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Speaker 3: which is much faster than we even blink our eye,

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Speaker 3: So it's going to be a lot lower latency as

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Speaker 3: well as faster speeds that we'll be bringing with our

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Speaker 3: new satellite technology.

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Speaker 1: I suppose it's easy just to think in terms of

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Speaker 1: the overall kind of download and upload speeds, but really

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Speaker 1: you do need to be looking at that at the

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Speaker 1: latency as well, and the fact that these are entirely

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Speaker 1: different types of satellites, aren't they.

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Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly right. So what NBN launched ten years

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Speaker 3: ago or so was two satellites as I say, a

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Speaker 3: long way above the Earth. What we're launching as Kuiper

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Speaker 3: is over three two hundred satellites. Now, these satellites are

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Speaker 3: around six hundred kilometers above the Earth and they will

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Speaker 3: orbit the Earth, you know, in constellations that bring essentially

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Speaker 3: a mesh network around the Earth, and these will travel

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Speaker 3: over Australia bringing services. And this low earth orbit satellite

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Speaker 3: technology means that the signal is only going up six

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Speaker 3: hundred kilometers, it's I say, thirty to fifty milliseconds, which

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Speaker 3: allows you to do all the things that we take

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Speaker 3: for granted, like you and I talking on a video

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Speaker 3: link now, with six hundred milliseconds of latency, that would

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Speaker 3: be stuttering and starting and we wouldn't be able to

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Speaker 3: talk to each other.

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Speaker 2: But with what we're.

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Speaker 3: Bringing with low latency, it means our conversation is seamless,

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Speaker 3: and video calling, gaming, all of those things that people

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Speaker 3: perhaps in the cities would take for granted haven't been

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Speaker 3: available to people in the most rural and remote plants

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Speaker 3: of Australia. And with what we're bringing, they'll be all

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Speaker 3: do you do those things?

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Speaker 1: And the figure that I saw was something like three

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand kind of properties customers potentially will benefit from this,

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Speaker 1: and it's not just I suppose the ability to work

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Speaker 1: from home or the ability to play games and things. Connectivity,

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Speaker 1: particularly in rural and regional areas, is absolutely vital for

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Speaker 1: just safety.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it's absolutely critical.

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Speaker 3: And I've spent a long time going out to parts

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Speaker 3: of regional Australia around Gilgandra in New South Wales and

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Speaker 3: talking to customers, talking to families where you know, one

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Speaker 3: teenage child is trying to study online, the other wants

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Speaker 3: to stream Netflix or do something and they can't do

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Speaker 3: both at the same time, so the families having to

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Speaker 3: make trade off as to who's doing what. And you know,

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Speaker 3: with the service that we'll be bringing, it would be like,

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Speaker 3: you know, everyone can do what they want. I think

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Speaker 3: it's you know, it's from examples like that, but out

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Speaker 3: sort of in regional Queensland talking to farmers who are

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Speaker 3: trying to run a business and they're not getting great connectivity. Today,

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Speaker 3: I spoke to one farmer that needs to drive up

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Speaker 3: to the top of the hill on their farm, which

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Speaker 3: they've now named Zoom Hill because it's the only place

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Speaker 3: they could get enough connectivity to to do Zoom calls

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Speaker 3: with their accountant, with their suppliers and do all of

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Speaker 3: the things they need to run their business. So it's

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Speaker 3: it's work, it's education, it's it's health, it's it's telehealth.

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Speaker 3: You know, ironically, the people that live furthest from you know,

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Speaker 3: health care providers and would benefit most from telehealth can't

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Speaker 3: use it if they've got poor connectivity. So you know,

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Speaker 3: to your point around safety, it's you know, it's very

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Speaker 3: much across a whole spectrum of things which you know,

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Speaker 3: if you live in towns and cities you tend to

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Speaker 3: take for granted, but people living out in these more

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Speaker 3: rural communities just they can't do today. And this is

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Speaker 3: what we're bringing Project Kaiper to Australia to solve those problems.

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Speaker 1: Well, I want to ask you and that the space

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Speaker 1: enthusiast in me is just is desperate to ask you

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Speaker 1: more about the launchers and the satellites. But I'm curious

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Speaker 1: why Amazon in this case, because we've got Starlink, which

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Speaker 1: is owned and operator by SpaceX. It's already well established

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Speaker 1: in the area and there are services available through Starlink

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Speaker 1: for regional and rural Australia. NBNC is effectively partnering almost

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Speaker 1: with the challenger in this space. So what is it

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Speaker 1: that Amazon is bringing here that has presented this path

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Speaker 1: forward for NBNC.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so Amazons set out on this journey back in

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Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. They could see that across the globe there

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Speaker 3: are billions of people living communities that aren't served by

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Speaker 3: traditional technologies. And it takes an organization of the scale

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Speaker 3: of Amazon to invest and you know, this investment to

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Speaker 3: launch the constellation of satellites I talked about, it's around

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Speaker 3: ten billion US dollars or fifteen billion Australian dollars. So

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Speaker 3: it's a huge investment, and it takes a company like

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Speaker 3: Amazon that's prepared to make long term investments because it

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Speaker 3: could see an opportunity to serve customers that weren't served previously.

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Speaker 3: So bringing that to Australia and working with NBN, we

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Speaker 3: see a great opportunity to partner in that mission to

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Speaker 3: connect unserved or underserved communities. What Kuiper can bring is

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Speaker 3: a state of the art, you know, high performance broadband

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Speaker 3: network that's being built globally and will benefit Australians with

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Speaker 3: NBN that have the capability to connect very rural and

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Speaker 3: remote communities. They work with retail service providers to provide

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Speaker 3: those services, and we think that's a really powerful combination

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Speaker 3: that will you know, it'll absolutely revolutionize the experien into the.

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Speaker 2: Life of people in these communities.

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Speaker 1: What about the flow on effect then, because we are

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Speaker 1: talking mostly about rural and regional communities, but having another

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Speaker 1: big player in the business like Amazon through Project Kiper

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Speaker 1: partnering with NBN, it's got to be good for competition,

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Speaker 1: it's got to be good for prices. More broadly in

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Speaker 1: this space.

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Speaker 3: It will definitely be great for Australians. So the deal

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Speaker 3: that we announced recently with NBN was specifically around replacing

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Speaker 3: their Skymaster services. Amazon will be bringing Kyper services to Australia.

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Speaker 3: More generally, customers will be able to buy direct from Kuiper.

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Speaker 3: The network we are building has the flexibility, capacity, performance

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Speaker 3: to serve many different types of customers, whether that's you know,

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Speaker 3: residential customers all the way up through enterprises, government agencies.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's a very flexible network and we'll be

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Speaker 3: bringing services to benefit homes, businesses, enterprises, government agencies is

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Speaker 3: right across Australia.

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Speaker 2: So that for me is the really exciting part of this, Okay.

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Speaker 1: How many you mentioned was a three thousand, two hundred

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Speaker 1: satellites will be part of the network. How many are

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Speaker 1: in space at the moment.

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Speaker 3: So we had a launch just recently that was our

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Speaker 3: fourth successful launch in just under four months. That's taken

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Speaker 3: the number of satellites to just over one hundred, So

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Speaker 3: one hundred and two up there now. And from this

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Speaker 3: point forward, our production facilities in the US are ramping

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Speaker 3: up our production. We've got a processing plant down in

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Speaker 3: Florida that takes all those satellites and puts them on

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Speaker 3: the launch vehicles, and then we've got a launch program

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Speaker 3: with a number of different launch providers. Now Amazon's investment

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Speaker 3: has been the biggest investment commercial launch of satellites globally ever,

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Speaker 3: so it's a huge, huge undertaking. But from here on in,

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Speaker 3: you know, every time we launch more satellites, we're just

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Speaker 3: building the capacity, seeing the capability of this network. So

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Speaker 3: really exciting time to be part of it.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely in four in four months, it's that's quite a

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Speaker 1: pace to be kind of keeping up in terms of

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Speaker 1: the number of launchers and the number of satellites to

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Speaker 1: get into space. And I did see a full disclosure

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Speaker 1: I've watched a number of these launchers now because I

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Speaker 1: find them fascinating, and some of them are done using

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Speaker 1: SpaceX aircraft, aren't they. So there is still an element

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Speaker 1: of cooperation. I know it's a commercial arrangement, but it

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Speaker 1: is kind of amusing that that Amazon Kyper Projects Kiper

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Speaker 1: satellites are being put into space by SpaceX. It's amazing.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I mean SpaceX is a is a launch

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Speaker 3: service provider, like like other partners we work with. Our

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Speaker 3: first two launches were with ULA United Launch Alliance on

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Speaker 3: their on their Atlas five rocket, and the recent launch

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Speaker 3: was with a SpaceX Fulcon nine rocket. So there's there's

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Speaker 3: many providers out there, and you know, we're we're using

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Speaker 3: a range of providers to to get the capacity to

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Speaker 3: launch the number of satellites we want to be launching

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Speaker 3: over the next few years.

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Speaker 1: This might be something that you're not able to answer,

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Speaker 1: but are there plans at any point for Amazon to

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Speaker 1: be launching itself in terms of because we know that

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Speaker 1: there is the Blue Origin spacecraft etc. That is all

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Speaker 1: kind of connected in with Amazon and Jeff Bezos, is

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Speaker 1: their potential for Project Kiper satellites to be going into

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Speaker 1: space using an Amazon built and owned spacecraft.

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Speaker 3: So there's nothing I can disclose in terms of timing,

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Speaker 3: but obviously we're talking to Blue Origin as well as

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Speaker 3: other providers. Yeah, it'd be nice thing to see, wouldn't it.

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Speaker 1: It'd be fantastic exciting times. Joe, thank you for talking

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Speaker 1: to Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 2: No problem, it's great to be here.

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Speaker 1: That was Joe Lathan, Amazon's country manager for Project Kiper.

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Speaker 1: If you've got something that you would like to know,

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Speaker 1: a question that you would like to put to us,

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Speaker 1: then please send it through on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or

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Speaker 1: at Fearangreed.

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Speaker 2: Dot com dot au.

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Speaker 1: I'm Michael Thompson and this is Fear and Greed Q

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Speaker 1: and A