(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc. plans to launch its first Venture Kuiper manufacturing satellites in 2024 and begin beta testing its formidable internet-from-space service with clients the identical 12 months. 

Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vp of gadgets and companies, revealed the timeline at a satellite tv for pc business commerce present in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. He additionally showcased varied prototype person terminals that future clients will use to faucet into the satellite tv for pc constellation. The prototypes included three totally different sized antennas, together with a small seven-inch-square mannequin solely barely larger than an Amazon Kindle.

“That is dramatically totally different than something you’ve ever seen” from a low-Earth orbit constellation, Limp mentioned throughout the hearth chat.

Amazon’s smallest mannequin gives speeds of as much as 100 megabits per second. A bigger 11-inch-square antenna is able to 400 megabits per second, and a 19-inch by 30-inch mannequin can deal with 1 gigabit per second, Amazon mentioned. The corporate didn’t disclose costs for the gadgets, however expects to fabricate the 11-inch-square model for lower than $400 apiece.

The bulletins underscore Amazon’s dedication to one in all its greatest areas of funding, at the same time as the corporate trims its ambitions elsewhere. Amazon earlier this 12 months wrapped up its largest-ever layoffs, cuts that fell closely on Limp’s gadgets group, which makes Echo good audio system, Kindle tablets and different gadgets. He reiterated that Amazon deliberate to take a position greater than $10 billion on the Kuiper enterprise.

Venture Kuiper is Amazon’s deliberate constellation of three,236 low-Earth satellites, designed to blanket the globe and supply low-latency web protection to tens of millions of potential clients. It’s an analogous idea to SpaceX’s Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which has already launched roughly 4,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit and claims to have greater than 1 million clients.

Limp additionally mentioned the primary two check Kuiper satellites have been shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in preparation for a attainable launch in Could as secondary payloads on the debut flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. ULA is at present focusing on a Could 4 launch.