Amazon wants to put your next phone call in orbit. The company has filed an application with the FCC to launch the Amazon Leo Direct-to-Device (D2D) System — a constellation of up to 5,105 low Earth orbit satellites built to deliver voice, messaging, data, and emergency services straight to ordinary mobile devices. If regulators sign off, deployment begins in 2028, and Amazon says it will partner with mobile network operators to sell the service globally.
That number deserves a beat of attention. Amazon’s core Leo broadband constellation — the venture that began life as Project Kuiper — is planned at roughly 3,200 satellites, and more than 375 of those had launched as of early July. The D2D filing proposes a second fleet nearly double the size of the first, dedicated entirely to reaching phones rather than dish antennas.
The Globalstar spectrum is the keystone
The filing leans on the definitive merger agreement Amazon struck with Globalstar in April. That deal hands Amazon Globalstar’s satellite operations and its mobile satellite services spectrum licenses, which carry global authorizations — the regulatory raw material a phone-facing network needs. The new D2D satellites will talk to handsets over L-band and S-band frequencies, while separate Ka-band and V-band links haul aggregated traffic between the satellites and Amazon’s ground stations, working much like backhaul behind a cell tower.
There’s a wrinkle for the international picture: trade outlet Advanced Television reports that the application also asks to use spectrum assigned to Iridium’s network outside the US — notable timing, given Rocket Lab is in the process of acquiring Iridium.
Apple is already on the manifest
Globalstar is the network that today carries Emergency SOS for iPhones, and Amazon inherits that relationship. The company says the expanded network will power satellite services for supported iPhone and Apple Watch models — Emergency SOS, Messages via satellite, Find My, and Roadside Assistance — and that it will “collaborate with Apple on future satellite services” as the constellation grows. In practice, Amazon is positioning itself as the space-side plumbing for one of the largest installed bases of satellite-capable devices on Earth.
The consumer pitch echoes what Starlink built with T-Mobile: carriers bolt satellite coverage onto their plans, and phones fall back to space when towers disappear. Amazon argues its version will do more than relay texts. Unlike conventional “bent pipe” satellites that bounce signals to the ground unprocessed, Leo’s D2D satellites will process signals in orbit before relaying them, which the company says improves performance and spectrum efficiency.
Five shells, one planet
The orbital architecture spreads the fleet across five shells. Three mid-latitude shells — at 580 km, 560 km, and 510 km altitude with inclinations between roughly 56 and 58 degrees — blanket the world’s most populated bands. A fourth shell at 570 km and 73 degrees stretches coverage toward high latitudes, and a fifth at 540 km and 84 degrees reaches near-polar territory. The layering matters for a phone service: unlike a fixed dish, a handset can’t point at a satellite, so dense, overlapping coverage is what keeps a call alive.
Beyond consumer phones, Amazon is pitching D2D at disaster response, global fleet management, remote worksite operations, and IoT sensors in places with no ground network at all — the same rural-connectivity story it tells for Leo broadband, now shrunk to fit in a pocket.
What stands between filing and phone bars
An FCC application is a proposal, not a network. Amazon still needs regulatory approval, thousands of satellite builds, launch capacity on top of the 100+ missions already booked for the core constellation, and carrier deals that make the service show up on a monthly bill. The 2028 deployment start means real coverage arrives closer to the decade’s end — into a market where Starlink’s direct-to-cell service will have had years of head start. What Amazon brings that rivals can’t easily copy: Globalstar’s globally cleared spectrum, an anchor customer in Apple, and a retail-scale balance sheet that treats a second 5,105-satellite constellation as a complement, not a moonshot.
