Colorado awards Amazon $25.4 million to provide satellite internet to areas with poor service

Amazon also captured 44% of the state’s locations with poor internet service. With two-thirds of states submitting final BEAD proposals by deadline, Colorado ranks 2nd highest so far for share of awards to satellite providers Amazon or Starlink.

"Approximately 44% of Colorado’s eligible households with subpar or no internet access are primed to get satellite broadband service from a company that doesn’t offer it yet: Amazon.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which is in the process of sending 3,200 satellites to low earth orbit, was preliminarily awarded $25.4 million in federal funds from the Colorado Broadband Office in a final proposal submitted last week. It’s part of the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment program, which Congress approved in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Act.

Officials from Amazon declined to comment. But they shared a letter sent to the National Telecommunications Information Administration last fall about why its low earth orbit, or LEO, internet service should be a viable option at a time states were in the process of picking fiber-internet companies for their BEAD program.

“Because satellite operators need not lay miles of fiber to connect customers in remote areas, a defining advantage of LEO broadband is that it costs little more to deliver service to remote corners of Montana than to a customer standing in Times Square,” said the letter signed by Kuiper Sysftems’ corporate counsel Christopher Cook."

https://coloradosun.com/2025/09/11/colorado-awards-amazon-satellite-internet-bead/