{"id":738935,"date":"2026-07-02T12:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/738935\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T12:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:58:08","slug":"amazon-has-enough-satellites-to-launch-its-starlink-competitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/738935\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon has enough satellites to launch its Starlink competitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon says it now has enough satellites operating in low-Earth orbit to light up its Starlink internet competitor. With last night\u2019s launch, Amazon Leo has 396<\/a> satellites deployed, which is \u201cenough to support continuous service across initial latitudes,\u201d according to Chris Weber, VP heading up business and product for Amazon Leo. That puts the company on track to meet its \u201cmid-2026\u201d target<\/a> for commercial availability. Just don\u2019t expect miracles on day one.<\/p>\n

SpaceX went live with its \u201cBetter than nothing beta\u201d<\/a> back in 2020 when it had almost 900 satellites operating in low-Earth orbit. It initially served a narrow band of users in the upper US and Canada, who complained<\/a> about frequent service interruptions and high sensitivity to obstructions, with speeds between 50Mbps and 150Mbps, and latency from 20ms to 40ms. By 2022, the service and coverage areas had already dramatically improved<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Early adopters of Amazon\u2019s Leo service can expect the same initially, with future satellite launches helping to improve performance, increase capacity, and expand global coverage.<\/p>\n

SpaceX currently has over 10,000 Starlink satellites in operation, providing robust internet connectivity on land, sea, and air in over 160 countries. Performance varies by the dish, service level paid for, time of day, and location of the user, but we\u2019re now talking 200Mbps median download speeds, 10Mbps to 40Mbps uploads, and latency hovering around 25ms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be years before Amazon can boast similar performance numbers as it continues to launch a planned 3,232 Leo satellites. Right now it\u2019s well behind schedule, in part due to Jeff Bezos\u2019 struggle to get Blue Origin\u2019s reusable New Glenn<\/a> launch vehicle into regular operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon says it now has enough satellites operating in low-Earth orbit to light up its Starlink internet competitor.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[960,3,79,193,1513,172],"class_list":["post-738935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-amazon","tag-news","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738935","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=738935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}