Amazon.com Inc is looking to hire government sales leads in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, laying the groundwork for its satellite Internet business in East Asia.
Amazon Kuiper, the Seattle-based company’s satellite unit, is advertising roles for government solutions managers to cover the three major economies. The winning candidates would be expected to build high-performing teams, according to the job postings.
Taiwanese officials had said in December last year that they are in talks with Project Kuiper for collaboration.
Photo: Reuters
A satellite link should help Taiwan, in particular, build resilience and maintain access to the Internet in the event of a Chinese attack disrupting its networks. Tensions between Taipei and Beijing have increased since the election of President William Lai (賴清德) last year. In March, Lai labeled China a “foreign hostile force” for the first time as he unveiled wide-ranging measures to counter infiltration efforts, drawing an immediate rebuke from Beijing.
Amazon, which to date has 54 satellites of its planned 3,236-satellite constellation in orbit, has said it plans to start commercial service later this year.
Kuiper, which would compete with SpaceX’s market-leading Starlink, expects to sell residential broadband service as well as packages of connectivity for government and corporate clients. The company in 2023 announced a deal with a consortium of Japanese telecommunications firms to offer Internet service there.
The US company has invested heavily to build its presence in Asia, sinking billions of dollars into its online retail operations in India, expanding its Singapore-based cloud services and adding to its Amazon Web Services offerings in Japan.
An Amazon representative declined to comment on the job postings.
Bloomberg News has reported that Kuiper has struggled to ramp up satellite manufacturing. Amazon also faces delays from the rocket builders responsible for ferrying the Kuiper satellites to space.
Taiwan faces greater urgency to develop a communications backup system following repeat instances of subsea cables linking outlying islands being cut by Chinese vessels. The nation’s leading telecom service provider, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), has expanded its satellite initiative over the past few years as part of a broader resilience program.
Chunghwa said in a statement that it would try to become a distributor for Kuiper and offer the service to government entities and private companies in Taiwan.
The two companies are also talking about a partnership on ground stations, it said.
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