Vodafone Group has signed a commercial agreement with Amazon Leo, Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite network, to use space-based infrastructure as the backhaul link connecting remote 4G and 5G mobile towers to its core telecommunications network across Europe and Africa — a deal that could bring reliable mobile connectivity to communities where laying fibre has long been commercially unviable.
The partnership was publicly announced on Monday, March 2, 2026, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Under the agreement, Vodafone will use Amazon Leo to connect geographically dispersed mobile base stations back to its core network in Germany and other European countries, before progressively rolling out across Africa through its majority-owned subsidiary Vodacom. The companies expect the first sites to be connected in 2026.
The deal addresses one of telecommunications’ most persistent problems: the cost and complexity of providing backhaul — the critical link between a mobile mast and the wider network — in terrain where digging trenches for fibre cable is either prohibitively expensive or logistically impractical. Across rural Germany, mountainous regions in Europe, and sparsely populated areas in Africa, the economics of terrestrial infrastructure have left many communities with poor or no mobile coverage for years.
Amazon Leo’s satellite system delivers high-speed cell site backhaul of up to 1 gigabit per second download and 400 megabits per second upload. Amazon Leo has over 200 satellites currently in orbit and hundreds more built and ready for launch. The service began a preview for enterprise customers in November 2025 and will roll out more broadly as it adds coverage and capacity.
Vodafone Group Chief Executive Margherita Della Valle said: “Vodafone is looking to space to connect more mobile base stations to our core network, and strengthen resilience even in the most challenging environments. Amazon Leo’s new satellite constellation supports our ambition to give all Vodafone customers reliable and high-speed connectivity, wherever they are.”
The partnership also strengthens Vodafone’s network resilience. Satellite backhaul provides a redundancy layer that allows mobile services to remain operational when ground-based infrastructure fails — during floods, natural disasters, or other disruptions — a feature of growing relevance given the frequency of climate-related infrastructure damage across both Africa and Europe.
Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is planned as an initial constellation of 3,236 low Earth orbit broadband satellites orbiting at altitudes between 590 and 630 kilometres. The full network is expected to cost up to around $20 billion to deliver and be completed by around 2030 to 2031, using rockets from United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, Blue Origin, and SpaceX.
The Amazon Leo deal is distinct from a separate Vodafone initiative involving AST SpaceMobile, which is developing a direct-to-smartphone satellite service that would allow ordinary consumer handsets to connect to satellites without any ground-based tower infrastructure. That service could potentially go live later in 2026, though no confirmed commercial launch date has been set.
For Africa, the implications are significant. Vodacom operates across South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Lesotho, among other markets, where extending network coverage into rural and remote areas has historically required substantial capital outlay with limited near-term commercial returns. Satellite backhaul fundamentally changes that calculus, allowing Vodacom to connect new base stations at a fraction of the traditional cost and timeline.
