Amazon and SpaceX are looking to deploy satellite ground stations in Ireland for their respective Kuiper and Starlink satellite units.

On June 20th, Amazon made moves seeking approval from the Irish telecommunications regulator Comreg for a new ground station in East Cork in the south of Ireland to serve as a Kuiper gateway.

The site, at the National Space Centre in Elfordstown, Midleton, is just one of many battlegrounds where Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite operators build out their terrestrial infrastructure.

Starlink recently lodged its own application for a ground station in Killala, County Mayo. The company already operates one site at Garretstown, West Cork.

The licenses, if granted, ringfence radio frequencies for use with the NGSO system the operator is looking to connect.

“There’s room for lots of winners there,” Amazon executive chairman told Reuters in January. “I predict Starlink will continue to be successful, and I predict Kuiper will be successful as well. … There’s insatiable demand [for Internet].

Elfordstown Earthstation is a ground station site in County Cork, in the south of Ireland, operated by National Space Centre Ltd. Commissioned in 1984 by Telecom Éireann (Eircom) in association with Eutelsat, it is Ireland’s only and Europe’s most western teleport. Today, it hosts some 33 antennas.

The Kuiper constellation is intended to eventually comprise 3,236 satellites selling to consumers as well as enterprise and governments across competitive tiered service packages priced to blitzscale. Morgan Stanley estimates capital expenditure for the company on this work will amount to $96.4 billion in 2025 alone, and the company reports expectations to begin offering Internet services by the end of the year.

They have their work cut out, with the Starlink constellation spanning over 7,600 satellites as of the end of May, hitting a four million subscriber milestone in September 2024. The company plans a total of 12,000 proliferated satellites, possibly to expand to 34,400.

Starlink’s Swiss front

SpaceX’s Starlink is also looking to expand its ground infrastructure in mainland Europe.

Earlier this month, Starlink made an application to the Swiss Office of Communications (BAKOM) for 40 antennas in the district of Leuk in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, to serve as gateways for its satellite network.

The public consultation on the development expires soon, on June 28th.

While Starlink wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the associated documents, with the applicant and landowner listed as Signalhorn AG, a prominent local official saw through the obfuscation.

“If you look at the type of antenna, you can assume that it is Starlink,” the mayor of Leuk, Alain Bregy, said on June 10 when speaking to Keystone-SDA news agency.

Swiss Teleport Leuk Teleport & Data Centre (formerly SignalHorn) operates out of Leuk. Constructed in 1972, the Leuk site has more than 50 antennas serving customers on C-Band, Ku & Ka-Band frequencies.