While Amazon's Project Kuiper is currently at a disadvantage relative to SpaceX's Starlink in the satellite broadband race, an accelerated launch schedule and tighter integration with AWS put Kuiper on track to challenge Starlink's lead, Barclays analysts said in a recent report.

"We believe Kuiper's accelerated launch schedule and AWS backbone network will serve as a strong foundation for Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN ) to effectively compete with Starlink, especially as Kuiper scales toward full commercial service," the analysts said.

Although Starlink currently has more than 6 million users worldwide, with 2 million in the United States alone, Kuiper is narrowing the gap and expects to have 285 satellites in orbit by the end of this year, with commercial promotion planned to begin as early as the first half of 2026.

Kuiper’s innovative “half-duplex” terminal design offers higher throughput than Starlink in a smaller, lighter form factor, which Barclays expects will significantly reduce manufacturing costs.

In addition to consumer broadband, Barclays highlights Kuiper's growth opportunities in the maritime and government markets, where Starlink has established a strong foothold with 75,000 active ships and emerging government contracts. The maritime market, in particular, provides fertile soil for Kuiper's development.

“Beyond the consumer market, especially in the early stages, we now believe that the maritime market may be the larger of Kuiper’s two major opportunities,” the analyst added.

Kuiper’s tight integration with Amazon’s AWS infrastructure is expected to improve latency performance — a potential advantage over Starlink’s more independent network architecture. This cloud computing backbone network, combined with Amazon’s vast ecosystem, puts Kuiper in a unique position in the satellite internet race.

However, Starlink continues to enhance its service, recently improving latency to 8% below the U.S. wireless median following infrastructure upgrades, and plans to deploy the next-generation V3 satellites in the first half of 2026, which will increase bandwidth by more than 10 times - although this depends on the successful development of SpaceX's Starship rocket.

With Starlink and Kuiper both targeting the lucrative maritime and government sectors while competing for a growing consumer base, the satellite internet market looks set to usher in more intense competition and rapid technological advancement to benefit underserved regions around the world.