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Amazon Leo Secures 7-Year Permit in Nigeria, Challenging Starlink’s Satellite Internet

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Nigeria’s satellite internet landscape is set for a shake-up after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) granted Amazon Leo—a rebranded Project Kuiper—a seven-year landing permit on January 12, effective February 28, 2026.

This makes Nigeria one of Africa’s first markets for the service, ending Elon Musk’s Starlink monopoly after two years of dominance marred by price hikes, capacity caps in cities like Lagos, and biometric requirements.

Amazon Leo plans to deploy its low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of 3,236 satellites at 590-630 km altitude, promising residential speeds up to 400 Mbps and 1 Gbps for enterprises. Using Ka-band frequencies, it offers higher throughput in dense urban areas compared to Starlink’s Ku-band, though it’s more prone to rain fade in Nigeria’s tropics. The system’s dense satellite network allows seamless handoffs to maintain connections during downpours.

Pricing details remain undisclosed, but expectations are high for competitive rates to undercut Starlink’s ₦590,000 ($415) hardware kit and ₦57,000 ($40) monthly residential fee—or ₦159,000 ($112) for business plans—making high-speed internet more accessible in underserved regions.

Infrastructure Boost and Job Creation

The permit mandates Amazon Leo to invest in local gateways, ground stations, power systems, and fiber links across Nigeria’s 36 states. This will spur hiring for network engineers, field technicians, logistics coordinators, and supply chain roles, leveraging Amazon’s distribution expertise to avoid Starlink’s early pitfalls.

Broader Connectivity Reach

Beyond homes, the approval covers three segments:

Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) for static homes, offices, and enterprises.

Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) for emergency response, security, and asset tracking.

Earth Stations in Motion (ESIM) for ships, planes, trains, and vehicles, targeting Nigeria’s logistics, aviation, and maritime sectors.

As Starlink faces urban congestion, Amazon Leo’s entry could accelerate Africa’s connectivity race, fostering competition, infrastructure growth, and digital inclusion.

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How Enugu Auto Dealer Chukwuebuka Ogbonna Allegedly Pocketed ₦15.4m Meant for Importation

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The Enugu Zonal Directorate of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arraigned Chukwuebuka Anacletus Ogbonna before Justice Vincent C. Ezeugwu of the Enugu State High Court, sitting in Independence Layout, Enugu. Ogbonna, who operates under the name and style of Monpere’s Autos, faces a four-count charge bordering on stealing by conversion to the tune of ₦15,400,000.

The trouble began for the auto dealer following a petition from a buyer who claimed he paid Ogbonna the ₦15.4 million in October 2023 to assist him in importing three cars. Upon receiving the substantial sum, the defendant promised to deliver the vehicles on or before Christmas Day, December 25, 2023. However, instead of delivering the cars or returning the money, Ogbonna allegedly converted the funds to his personal use, leaving the buyer stranded.

The court charges detailed how the money was systematically diverted. Count one states that in September 2023, within the jurisdiction of the High Court of Enugu State, Ogbonna fraudulently converted ₦4,000,000 belonging to Mr. Paulson Nwakoby, which was meant for the vehicle purchase. Count two details another ₦4,000,000 fraudulently converted between November 28 and December 10, 2023. These actions violate Section 342 of the Criminal Code Law, Cap 30, Enugu State, and are punishable under Section 353 (1) of the same law.

Appearing in court, the defendant pleaded “not guilty” to all charges read to him. In view of the plea, EFCC counsel and Assistant Commander of the EFCC, ACE II Rotimi Ajobiewe, prayed the court for a definitive trial date and requested that the defendant be remanded in the custody of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) in Enugu. Justice Ezeugwu subsequently adjourned the matter to July 16, 2026, for the hearing of the bail application and ordered that Ogbonna be remanded at the EFCC’s holding facility in the interim.

The post How Enugu Auto Dealer Chukwuebuka Ogbonna Allegedly Pocketed ₦15.4m Meant for Importation appeared first on Business Today NG.

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Meta enters the crowded AI coding battle with Muse Spark 1.1

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Meta publicly launched a new version of Muse Spark on Thursday, a multimodal AI model designed for agentic coding that aims to compete with similar products offered by OpenAI and Anthropic.

Spark 1.1, the first version of which was announced in April, can engage in multi-step reasoning and handle complex processes, manage digital workflows, and deploy new features in enterprise systems, the company says.

Meta is a bit behind its competitors here; Anthropic and OpenAI have offered similar models for quite some time. But that doesn’t mean Meta’s entry into the market isn’t a threat.

An ongoing source of competitiveness within the AI industry remains the cost of usage, and Meta appears to be offering a competitive rate. Reuters reports that the company will charge $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens. That puts it in line (albeit slightly above) Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Luna.

Meta’s pitch to users is Spark’s ability to handle large agentic workloads, fix bugs, and help with large code migrations — the kind of automation that enterprises are increasingly turning to AI companies to provide.

“Muse Spark 1.1 delivers exceptional performance in personal agentic tasks that require planning and orchestration across a range of external apps and services,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Meta has released a handful of foundation AI models over the past few years. The Muse Spark release was apparently important enough to compel CEO Mark Zuckerberg to post on the social media platform X for the first time in three years. Zuckerberg’s last post was in July 2023, around the time the platform rebranded from Twitter to X.

In his post, Zuckerberg called Spark “a strong agentic and coding model at a very low price,” noting that the model was “strongest at agentic performance, tool use, and computer use.”

Zuckerberg also noted that there was “more to come soon” — implying that the company plans to release additional models.

It’s been a big week for AI announcements — particularly for Meta, which also unveiled a new AI image generation model on Tuesday, dubbed Muse Image. Other releases this week have included a new version of Grok from SpaceXAI, and a new family of models from OpenAI, GPT-5.6, that also dropped Thursday. Suffice it to say that the competition within the AI industry is as healthy as ever, and companies that wish to stand out from their peers have their work cut out for them.

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