- Amazon ditched the difficult-to-pronounce name Project Kuiper for the new name Amazon Leo
- Amazon Leo plans to offer commercial, residential broadband service sometime in 2026
- It will compete head to head with SpaceX's Starlink
Amazon has changed the working name of its Project Kuiper satellite initiative to the new commercial name Amazon Leo.
Excellent name, if you ask this reporter.
Amazon Leo is the company’s low-Earth orbit satellite (LEO) network, planned to provide broadband in areas where people lack access to terrestrial-based broadband.
The service will compete against SpaceX’s Starlink, which has a big head start, having begun offering commercial broadband service in 2021. Starlink currently has more than 8,000 satellites in orbit with 15,000 more requested. Starlink now serves more than 8 million customers.
Amazon Leo’s initial satellite constellation will include more than 3,000 satellites, although it’s only launched about 150 so far.
According to an Amazon blog posting, Amazon Leo will eventually provide service to “most countries around the globe.” However, it should be noted that both SpaceX and Amazon must obtain licenses from other countries to operate their satellite services in the sky above those countries.
Amazon Leo is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and it also has a satellite production facility in Kirkland, Washington, where it can build up to five satellites per day.
Amazon said it will provide three tiers of broadband service, delivering downlink speeds up to 100 Mbps, 400 Mbps and 1 Gbps. The company didn’t provide any pricing details.
By comparison, Starlink offers up to 100 Mbps for $40 per month, 200 Mbps for $80 per month and 305 Mbps for $120 per month.
Amazon Leo plans to roll out initial satellite broadband to some enterprises by the end of 2025, with residential service starting sometime in 2026.
The BEAD connection
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is currently working through BEAD proposals from all U.S. states and territories. But it looks like about 20.9% of BEAD awards will go to the satellite providers Starlink and Amazon Leo, amounting to more than 754,300 locations. Currently, about 426,700 locations are awarded to Starlink and 323,900 are awarded to Amazon Leo. However, those numbers could change after NTIA’s final determinations.
It’s curious that so many awards are being given to Amazon Leo, considering that it doesn’t even have a commercial satellite broadband offering, yet.
For example, the state of Oklahoma awarded 5,200 locations, or 15.1%, to Amazon Leo. When asked why the state gave all its LEO awards to a company that doesn’t have a commercial constellation yet, Edyn Rolls, chief strategic officer of the Oklahoma Broadband Office, said, “Very candidly, they bid the lower cost.”
In fact, based on the new BEAD rules implemented since the Trump administration, states are asked to award BEAD funds to the lowest-cost bidders.
Telecom blogger Doug Dawson may have summed it up best when he wrote, “There is no question that this has turned into one of the oddest years for broadband during my career. We’ve seen Digital Equity grants killed. We’re seeing the spending for BEAD being cut in half. And maybe oddest of all, we’re seeing states make sizeable BEAD grant awards to Kuiper, although the company isn’t close to having its first broadband customer.”
He added, “You might think we should have learned a lesson from when Starlink was a big winner in the RDOF reverse auction. The FCC eventually killed those awards after it determined that Starlink was not ready to fulfill a major commitment to serve large numbers of locations in specific geographies.”
Satellite and telecom
Despite all the growing pains, it looks like 2026 is going to be a big year for collaborations and/or competitions between telecom operators and satellite operators.
To that point, the GSMA is highlighting the fact that the wireless industry’s biggest annual event in Barcelona, Spain — MWC 2026 — will kick off with keynotes from SpaceX and Starlink executives.