Amazon Leo bets on India as next frontier for satellite broadband

Amazon’s satellite internet venture, Amazon Leo, has identified India as one of the most promising markets for its planned broadband services as the company presses ahead with the rollout of its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation. Speaking on Wednesday at the IAFI Space Policy Conference (ISPC26) in New Delhi, Chris Hofer, Amazon Leo’s Head of International Spectrum Management and Strategy, said the company’s mission to “connect the unconnected and underserved” makes India a natural fit for its next phase of expansion.

“We certainly believe India is a great candidate. Very digital-oriented administration. And of course there are folks that are unconnected that we believe we can bring competition in and connect those folks and provide broadband services,” Hofer told delegates at the conference, which brought together government officials, regulators and industry leaders to discuss satellite communications, spectrum management and the future of India’s space sector.

A large unconnected population
India remains one of the largest addressable markets for satellite broadband anywhere in the world. Despite rapid growth in mobile and fibre connectivity in its cities, hundreds of millions of people in rural, hilly and remote regions still lack reliable high-speed internet access, a gap successive governments have tried to close through programmes such as BharatNet and Digital India. Executives from Amazon Leo and its rivals have repeatedly pointed to this underserved population, alongside India’s push to digitise government services, banking and education, as the reason the country features prominently in their global rollout plans.

From a concept in 2019 to nearly 400 satellites
Hofer said Amazon Leo has deployed almost 400 satellites so far and is now manufacturing more than 15 satellites a week, underscoring the pace at which the constellation is being built out. Reflecting on the programme’s evolution, he recalled that it was “literally a piece of paper” back in 2019. “We’re very pleased to think back in 2019 that this project, this program, was literally a piece of paper and how far we’ve progressed,” he said.

The program was known for years as Project Kuiper before Amazon retired that name in November 2025 and rebranded the venture as Amazon Leo. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the network, which began large-scale satellite deployment in April 2025. Amazon Leo’s constellation is designed to eventually comprise more than 3,000 satellites linked by optical inter-satellite connections and a global network of ground gateway stations, with customers connecting through dedicated user terminals.

India’s crowded, and cautious, satcom race
Amazon Leo would enter an Indian satellite broadband market that is already taking shape, but has yet to go live commercially. Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb, and the Reliance Jio-SES joint venture have all secured licences from India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT), yet none has begun consumer services, as they await final spectrum allocation and security clearances. Under the DoT’s draft Telecommunications (Spectrum Assignment by Administrative Process) Rules, 2026, satellite spectrum is to be assigned administratively rather than through auction, against fixed annual fees, but only after operators clear a new and more demanding round of security requirements.

Amazon Kuiper Services India Private Limited’s own licence application remained under examination as of early 2026, according to the DoT, even as the company continues to engage Indian regulators through policy submissions. Among its asks, Amazon Leo has argued that satellite broadband should be recognised as a backhaul technology under the government’s PM-WANI public Wi-Fi framework, saying its low-latency network can deliver fibre-like performance in areas where laying physical cable is impractical.
CT Bureau