Amazon's Starlink Rival to Deploy 300+ Gateway Stations Globally

Amazon’s Starlink Rival to Deploy 300+ Gateway Stations Globally

December 10, 2025

To compete with Starlink, Amazon’s rival satellite internet service, Leo, is preparing to install over 300 ground-based “gateway” stations to help deliver robust speeds globally.

Amazon made the announcement at last week’s AWS re:Invent event. Once deployed, the fleet will rival the number of stations used by SpaceX to route internet data to Starlink subscribers.

AWS slide

(Credit: Amazon)

Amazon Leo—formerly Project Kuiper—is gearing up to manufacture millions of dishes for consumers and businesses to connect to its satellite internet service. On the backend, the company is also building out a network of gateway stations to relay data between the Leo satellites and ground-based fiber networks.

AWS slide

(Credit: Amazon)

The setup also mirrors Starlink, which uses its own ground stations to route data between orbiting satellites. In July, SpaceX revealed it has “more than 100 gateway sites in the United States alone—comprising a total of over 1,500 antennas,” to serve 2 million+ users in the US.

Jianping Pan, a computer science professor at the University of Victoria in Canada who studies satellite internet systems, also reports tracking over 300 Starlink ground stations.

In a session at AWS re:Invent, Amazon Leo networking engineer Nick Matthews said the company’s ground stations will be made up of five gateway satellite dishes based in remote areas. A slide from his presentation also says the company has “over 300+ gateways planned.”

Aws event

(Credit: Amazon)

Similar to Starlink, the ground stations can then send and receive data to another facility called a Point of Presence (POP), which is directly connected to fiber internet networks. However, Amazon engineers pointed out that the POPs can connect to the company’s AWS service, a major cloud provider that already serves top companies, including Netflix and Twitch.

This means a Leo customer could use the satellite internet service to reach an AWS cloud environment or third-party cloud providers through a “private network interconnect,” Matthews said.

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AWS event

(Credit: Amazon)

The result promises to deliver high-quality internet service to both consumers and business users of Amazon Leo, which recently kicked off a select beta for enterprise customers. The company plans on offering speeds at 1Gbps, 400Mbps, and 100Mbps through three different user terminals. That said, Matthews said Leo will offer latency at less than 50 milliseconds—a bit higher than Starlink, which is closer to 30ms and under.

An Amazon executive previously said Leo is aiming to launch in Q1. Still, the satellite internet service faces an uphill battle with SpaceX. Amazon needs to send up hundreds of additional satellites before it can offer a robust internet service to customers. Another slide in the presentation indicates Leo won’t initially offer global coverage.

AWS event slide

(Credit: Amazon)

Currently, Amazon Leo’s constellation spans about 150 satellites, while SpaceX’s Starlink has more than 9,000 and serves over 8 million global customers.