Amazon is rebranding its ambitious effort to expand global access to high-speed internet: Project Kuiper will now be known as Amazon Leo.
The Seattle-based tech giant announced Thursday that it was renaming its satellite broadband project in the midst of deploying the equipment that will help power it all.
Leo is a nod to “low Earth orbit,” where Amazon has so far launched more than 150 satellites as part of a constellation that will eventually include more than 3,200.
In a blog post, Amazon said the 7-year-old Project Kuiper began “with a handful of engineers and a few designs on paper” and like most early Amazon projects “the program needed a code name.” The team was inspired by the Kuiper Belt, a ring of asteroids in the outer solar system.
A new website for Amazon Leo proclaims “a new era of internet is coming,” as Amazon says its satellites can help serve “billions of people on the planet who lack high-speed internet access, and millions of businesses, governments, and other organizations operating in places without reliable connectivity.”
Amazon said it will begin rolling out service once it’s added more coverage and capacity to the network. Details about pricing and availability haven’t been announced.
Early customers and partners include JetBlue, which in September became the first airline to sign on with Leo, promising faster and more reliable inflight Wi-Fi. L3Harris, DIRECTV Latin America, Sky Brasil, and NBN Co., Australia’s National Broadband Network operator, are also signed up to deploy the service.
During a test in September, executives touted data transmission speeds from the constellation in excess of a gigabit per second.
Amazon’s primary satellite manufacturing facility is in Kirkland, Wash., with some of the components produced at Leo’s headquarters in nearby Redmond. Amazon also has a $140 million, 100,000-square-foot payload processing facility at Kennedy Space Center that prepares satellites for upcoming launches.
Amazon’s multibillion-dollar bid to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation began in earnest in April with the launch of the first 27 satellites.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy posted on X about the name change and said projects such as Echo and Kindle also had code names early on. And Amazon Devices & Services leader Panos Panay said that he was “psyched for what’s ahead” in his own post on X.
