Amazon is planning to launch its Leo satellite internet service in the middle of this year, the company’s CEO has told shareholders. That means people fancying some high-speed internet from low-Earth orbit without giving money to Elon Musk are soon to be in luck!
CEO Andy Jassy says Leo (fka Project Kuiper) will offer download speeds of 1Gbps, which could whoop the tail end off Musk’s Starlink service, which tends to max out at 280Mbps.
Jassy says Leo is part of a plan to “close the digital divide for rural communities” who currently lack high speed internet access or, in some cases, lack reliable connectivity at all. He says those communities can’t engage in digital life in the same way as urban areas.
In the letter to shareholders, he writes: “Over the last seven years, we’ve built a low Earth orbit satellite network (Amazon Leo) and put more than 200 satellites into space (which is the third-largest low Earth orbit network operating today). With a few thousand more satellites launching in the coming years, the constellation is expanding rapidly.
“Apart from enabling this connectivity, Leo will offer three unique benefits. First, the performance will be stronger (about six to eight times better on uplink, and two times better on downlink) than what customers have access to now. Second, this performance will come at a lower cost than alternatives. And third, Leo will seamlessly integrate with AWS to enable enterprises and governments to move data back and forth for storage, analytics, and AI.”
Jassy says the launch in mid-2026 is supported by enterprises and governments, but doesn’t mention the consumer launch at this time. So if you’ve held off on Starlink because of your aversion to Elon, this might be good news. The bad news is that you’ll have to fork over your hard-earned to Jeff Bezos instead. What a wonderful world.
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