Amazon has passed the milestone it needed to switch on its long-awaited Leo satellite broadband service, deploying enough satellites to begin initial coverage later this year, with the UK confirmed among the first wave of markets.
The breakthrough came in the early hours of 2 July, when a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted 29 satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral, the final Atlas V mission in Amazon’s launch programme. The flight took the constellation to 396 spacecraft, tying the record for the heaviest payload the veteran rocket has ever carried.
Chris Weber, vice president of Amazon’s Leo business, said the constellation was now large enough “to support continuous service across initial latitudes”. He added: “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 year, and future missions just add coverage and capacity.”
For Jeff Bezos’s answer to Elon Musk’s Starlink, the announcement marks the end of a lengthy and at times fraught deployment phase. Amazon, which rebranded the project from Kuiper to Leo last year, holds FCC authorisation for a constellation of around 3,236 satellites and had faced a regulatory deadline to orbit half of them by mid-2026, though the US regulator has since shown flexibility on timing, according to CNBC.
What it means for UK businesses
An enterprise and government preview has been under way since late 2025, but the consumer rollout is targeted for mid-to-late 2026 in priority markets including the UK, US, Canada, France and Germany. Britain’s early place in the queue owes much to Ofcom approval already being in place, though coverage will initially be limited to certain latitudes and broaden as more satellites launch. Full availability could stretch into 2027 depending on the pace of deployment.
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