Amazon said it will deploy more than 300 ground-based gateway stations to support its Amazon Leo satellite internet service, expanding the infrastructure it needs to compete directly with SpaceX’s Starlink network.
The company detailed the plan during last week’s AWS re:Invent conference, where it also disclosed preparations to manufacture “millions of dishes” for consumer and enterprise customers. The gateways will relay data between Leo satellites and terrestrial fibre networks, forming the backbone of the new service.
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Networking engineer Nick Matthews told attendees that each facility would contain “five gateway satellite dishes based in remote areas,” according to a presentation slide that listed more than 300 planned gateways. The configuration mirrors Starlink’s use of distributed ground stations to route data between orbiting satellites and the internet.
Amazon engineers said the new facilities would connect directly to AWS, one of the world’s largest cloud providers. By linking Amazon Leo traffic to AWS data centres or third-party cloud platforms via private network interconnects, the company expects to offer high-performance connectivity for both consumer and business users. A limited beta for select enterprise customers has already begun.
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Amazon plans to provide download speeds of 1 Gbps, 400 Mbps and 100 Mbps through three types of user terminals. Matthews said the network aims for latency “at less than 50 milliseconds,” slightly above Starlink’s typical 30 ms. The company has previously targeted a first-quarter 2026 commercial launch but must still deploy hundreds of satellites to achieve broader coverage. A slide from the presentation noted that Amazon Leo “won’t initially offer global coverage.”
The service currently operates with about 150 satellites. By comparison, SpaceX has placed more than 9,000 Starlink satellites in orbit and reported over 8 million global customers. The company also said in July that it operates more than 100 U.S. gateway sites comprising over 1,500 antennas.
Source: AWS Events, Starlink