To rival Musk’s Starlink, Amazon and Vrio will introduce satellite internet in South America

Amazon and telecommunications firm Vrio will jointly launch a satellite Internet service in seven South American countries, the two parties said Thursday, putting them in direct competition with Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Vrio, the U.S. firm that runs DirecTV and Sky Brazil’s Latin American subsidiary, will offer the service to customers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

“We think the opportunity is huge,” Lucas Werthein, vice president of Vrio, told Reuters.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, started by a former Starlink employee, will provide Internet using satellites in what is known as low-Earth orbit.

“Around 200 million people in the region have poor, little or no access to the Internet,” Werthein said, citing World Bank estimates. “Add to that the geographic terrain and, of course, a continent that has challenges when it comes to making major investments in infrastructure.”

The service will go live in mid-2025, starting in Argentina, according to Project Kuiper’s launch plan.

Project Kuiper will outline its plan in the coming months to put 3,236 satellites in the sky, said the firm’s director of Latin American business development, Bruno Henriques.

Amazon said in 2019 that it planned to invest $10 billion in the project.

“Our goal is for all customers, whether they live in urban, suburban or rural areas, to have the same level of broadband access,” Henriques said.