Amazon has asked the US Federal Communications Commission for permission to build a 5,105-satellite constellation dedicated to beaming voice, messaging and data straight to ordinary smartphones. The Amazon Leo direct-to-device filing, submitted on 24 July 2026, sets deployment to begin in 2028 — and it puts Amazon in direct competition with SpaceX’s Starlink Direct to Cell for the job of covering the gaps your carrier never will.
What the Amazon Leo direct-to-device filing actually asks for
The application covers up to 5,105 low Earth orbit satellites carrying phased-array antennas, on-board digital processing and optical inter-satellite links, so traffic can be routed between satellites by laser instead of bouncing back to a ground station on every hop. Amazon’s stated services are voice, messaging, data and emergency connectivity in places terrestrial towers do not reach.
This is a separate system from the broadband constellation Amazon already has flying. The company says it currently has more than 390 first-generation satellites in orbit, enough to start fixed broadband service this year. The direct-to-device layer is the new, phone-facing half of the plan.
The Globalstar connection is why this matters to Android users
The spectrum makes this filing more consequential than the satellite count does. Amazon Leo’s direct-to-device system runs on L-band and S-band, and that spectrum comes from Globalstar. Amazon says the application “follows a definitive merger agreement with Globalstar in April, which will see Amazon acquire Globalstar’s existing satellite operations, infrastructure, and assets, including mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum licenses with global authorizations, and enable Amazon to add D2D services to its growing low Earth orbit satellite network.” Note the tense: that is a deal Amazon has agreed, not one it has closed. The spectrum underpinning the whole plan is spectrum Amazon is still in the process of acquiring.
Globalstar matters to phone buyers because of who already depends on it. Amazon says Leo has “already announced an agreement with Apple to power satellite services for supported iPhone and Apple Watch models—including Emergency SOS via satellite, Messages, Find My”. In other words, the company building this constellation expects to be the one keeping Apple’s satellite features running.
Android is not shut out of that plan, at least on paper. Amazon describes the service as reaching “any compatible mobile device—including any of the growing number of smartphones from major manufacturers that have satellite-capable chipsets built in.” Flagship Snapdragon and Dimensity silicon has shipped with non-terrestrial network support for a couple of generations now, so the hardware side is largely in place. Amazon has also named carrier partners including Vodafone, DirecTV, South Africa’s Herotel and Australia’s National Broadband Network.
What is still missing
Everything a buyer would actually want to know. There is no pricing, no list of specific supported handsets, no country-by-country availability and no confirmed launch date beyond “deployment begins 2028” — and satellite timelines slip routinely. An FCC application is a request, not an approval, and Amazon and SpaceX are already fighting each other at the commission; Amazon has petitioned the FCC to deny SpaceX’s own application for a one-million-satellite constellation.
It is also worth being clear-eyed about the shape of this market. Satellite messaging arrived as a free safety feature on phones people already owned. What is being built now is a paid connectivity layer sold through carriers, and the spectrum that makes it possible is consolidating into a very small number of hands. If you are buying a phone today on the strength of a satellite feature, buy it for what the phone does now, not for a 2028 constellation that has not been approved yet. In the meantime, existing satellite fallback remains a thin safety net — as Verizon customers found during a recent international roaming outage that dropped phones into SOS-only mode.
