Amazon eyes satellite internet mid‑2026

Amazon has spent years building a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink, and now it says the service is finally due in mid-2026. Chief executive Andy Jassy put that date in Amazon’s annual shareholder letter this week, giving the clearest public launch target yet for the network now called Amazon Leo. (engadget.com) This is internet from space, but not from the huge satellites parked far above Earth that older systems used. Amazon Leo uses low Earth orbit satellites, which Amazon says fly roughly 370 miles above the planet, cutting the delay that makes video calls and web browsing feel sluggish. (aboutamazon.com) Amazon is not building a handful of these satellites. Its first network is planned to include more than 3,000 spacecraft, and Amazon said on March 28 that it had already put more than 200 Leo satellites into orbit after beginning production launches in April 2025. (aboutamazon.com) The hardware on the ground is just as important as the satellites overhead. Amazon has shown three dish designs, including a standard terminal under 11 inches square with speeds up to 400 megabits per second and a smaller 7-inch model with speeds up to 100 megabits per second, while its largest enterprise unit is designed for up to 1 gigabit per second. (aboutamazon.com) (engadget.com) Amazon has been trying to make those dishes cheap enough to spread beyond niche customers. The company said it hit an internal goal to build a terminal for less than $500, and it expects its standard terminal to cost less than $400 to produce. (aboutamazon.com) The catch is that Amazon is still racing the clock. The Federal Communications Commission said in February that Amazon was working against a separate July 2026 deadline to deploy 1,600 first-generation satellites, and Amazon had already asked for an extension after launch delays and rocket shortages. (cnbc.com) That helps explain why airlines are showing up before a big home-internet launch. Delta said on March 31 that it will start installing Amazon Leo on 500 aircraft in 2028, giving passengers gate-to-gate Wi-Fi on hundreds of planes before Amazon has said much about consumer pricing or a full residential rollout. (news.delta.com) (aboutamazon.com) Delta is not just buying bandwidth. Delta and Amazon said the airline will tie Leo together with Amazon Web Services, artificial intelligence, seatback screens, and Delta Sync, which turns the satellite link into part of a larger software stack instead of just a faster pipe to the internet. (news.delta.com) (aboutamazon.com) That is why this launch matters beyond rural broadband. Amazon is trying to sell one bundle that starts in orbit, lands on an aircraft or cell tower, and then feeds directly into its cloud business, turning connectivity, computing, and data services into one product. (engadget.com) (aboutamazon.com) If Amazon hits mid-2026, the first real test will not be whether it can announce a satellite network. The test will be whether it can launch enough satellites, ship enough terminals, and turn early deals with companies like Delta, AT&T, Vodafone, DirecTV Latin America, and NASA into a business big enough to challenge Starlink at scale. (engadget.com) (aboutamazon.com)