Following a midnight rocket launch, Amazon says that their Starlink challenger, Leo, now has enough satellites in orbit to start “initial service,” according to a company executive. But don’t expect a major rollout until more satellites go up.
As PCMag reports, last week, Amazon sent another 29 Leo satellites into space, bringing the total deployed in Earth’s orbit to 396. “Still lots of work ahead—including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude—but we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this yr, and future missions just add coverage and capacity,” tweeted Chris Weber, VP for Amazon Leo.
Aligns with Amazon’s Goal of Launching Leo in Mid-2026
The remark aligns with Amazon’s goal of launching Leo’s satellite internet service for customers sometime in mid-2026, following years of work and delays. However, industry watchers say Amazon’s initial service for Leo will be constrained to only a slice of the Earth’s geography until the company deploys more satellites.
Leo and Starlink use low-orbit satellites that constantly circle the planet to beam high-speed broadband to ground-based dish antennas. To offer 24/7 coverage across the globe, each system is designed to use thousands of orbiting satellites. In Leo’s case, the first-generation constellation is designed to span 3,232 satellites inserted into specific orbits to cover certain geographic regions.
Weber’s tweet notes that 390+ satellites mean Leo has “enough to support continuous service across initial latitudes.” The comment is a bit surprising, since satellite industry analyst Carlos Placido previously estimated that Leo would need 578 satellites in space to serve users in the “35 to 55 latitude band,” which covers the mid- and upper portions of the US and lower Canada.
So, it’s possible Amazon is considering “shrinking the initial latitude range” during the early kick-off for the Leo service, Placido told PCMag. He created a video simulating the earlier 360 Leo satellites in orbit. As you can see, a large portion of the satellites flows from southwest across the US to the upper northeast.
Sounds Good, but How’s the Service?
Placido also ran a 24-hour simulation of how 360 Leo satellites would perform. He found that a Leo user would be in view of at least one satellite 94% of the time if that customer were based around 45 degrees latitude, or where the city of Salem, Oregon, is located. “It is still intermittent but close to continuous,” he told PCMag. “I guess that should be more than enough for trials, etc., but strictly speaking, it remains intermittent.” It also suggests Amazon will likely offer Leo first to customers residing in specific areas where the satellite constellation is dense enough for 24/7 coverage.
For additional perspective, rival Starlink began inviting beta users to try the service in October 2020, when it had “633 in orbit distributed fairly evenly,” at an altitude of around 550 kilometers, according to Justin Beech, who runs the Satellite Tracker site from Australia.
“Leo has a higher altitude (600+ km) so each satellite can serve a larger footprint than Starlink did back then, and also has the benefit of hindsight, plus newer tech, meaning the possibility of a better beta experience at a lower count,” he told PCMag.
Amazon says Leo will Offer Better Performance over Starlink
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has teased that Leo will offer better performance over Starlink for uploads and downloads. The company is also building hundreds of “gateway” ground stations connected to fiber networks to beam the internet data to the orbiting satellites.
Beech added: “Maybe if their ground stations and other ducks are in a row, they may be able to start sooner than people expect, at least in areas where the signal can go down to a local ground station, and then provide a more solid experience than [Starlink’s] ‘better than nothing beta’ did.”
Still, satellite industry analyst Tim Farrar noted that obviously “more satellites are necessary to give a good quality of service.” But a denser constellation also makes it easier for each Leo dish antenna to find and connect with the satellites overhead. “Remember that Starlink started off with a self-pointing motorized antenna that aligned itself to the optimum positioning, and Amazon does not appear to be taking this approach,” Farrar said.
The first-gen Leo constellation also won’t offer 100% global coverage, but it contains a coverage gap that extends through much of Alaska, parts of Canada, and northern Europe. The company’s second-gen Leo system aims to fill the gap through an additional 4,504 satellites.
We don’t know how much Leo will cost at this point. We also wonder if Amazon might start by serving enterprise customers before consumers. But its arrival will add some anticipated competition to the satellite internet market, which Starlink has dominated, attracting over 12 million active customers.
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Photo Credit: dennizn / Shutterstock.com
