{"id":574013,"date":"2026-04-09T14:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574013\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T14:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:24:10","slug":"amazons-starlink-competitor-leo-gets-a-new-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574013\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon\u2019s Starlink competitor Leo gets a new date"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company\u2019s space-internet service Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) will \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aboutamazon.com\/news\/company-news\/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-2025-letter-to-shareholders?utm_source=SOCIAL&amp;utm_medium=TWITTER&amp;utm_term=amazonnews&amp;utm_content=20165674177&amp;linkId=928010192#:~:text=Over%20the%20last,in%20mid%2D2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">launch in mid-2026<\/a>.\u201d I\u2019m going to assume that means proper commercial availability since the company already announced the start of an \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/827783\/amazon-leo-ultra-antenna-enterprise-preview\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">enterprise preview<\/a>\u201d at the end of 2025, when the service was supposed to originally launch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Unlike SpaceX\u2019s Starlink service, Amazon doesn\u2019t (yet) have its own fleet of rockets to regularly send Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit. That\u2019s meant hitching rides with a variety of launch partners, including SpaceX, until Jeff Bezos\u2019 own reusable New Glenn rocket is fully operational.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Amazon has FCC approval for 3,236 Leo satellites, but has only launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aboutamazon.com\/news\/innovation-at-amazon\/project-kuiper-satellite-rocket-launch-progress-updates\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">241<\/a> so far, well below its commitment to have half (1,618) of its constellation deployed by July 2026. As such, Amazon has had to beg FCC Chair Brendan Carr for an extension. For comparison, SpaceX\u2019s active Starlink constellation currently totals over 10,000 satellites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Whenever the Leo service does finally go live, Jassy says it will be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/827783\/amazon-leo-ultra-antenna-enterprise-preview\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">faster than existing services<\/a> and cost less, with the added benefit of integrating seamlessly with AWS so that businesses and governments can \u201cmove data back and forth for storage, analytics, and AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Late as it is, there are many individuals, enterprises, and nations <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/column\/837202\/starlink-work-from-home\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">just waiting on an Elon Musk alternative<\/a> that can be installed quickly and economically to fill gaps in global data coverage, even if it does mean casting their lot with another problematic billionaire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company\u2019s space-internet service Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) will \u201claunch in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[960,79,193,1513,172,131879],"class_list":{"0":"post-574013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-spacex","12":"tag-tech","13":"tag-work-anywhere"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}