LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) – Mobile company Vodafone stated on Monday it had signed a deal with Amazon Leo, the U.S. company’s low Earth orbit sainformite network, to connect 4G and 5G mobile masts in remote areas in Europe and Africa.
Amazon Leo will offer connections of up to 1 Gbps for download and 400 Mbps for upload to link Vodafone’s network to masts in hard-to-reach locations, saving the expense of installing fibre, Vodafone stated.
Vodafone will start applying Amazon Leo to connect mobile base stations in Germany and other European countries this year before progressively rolling it out across Africa through its subsidiary Vodacom, it stated.
Amazon Leo has over 200 sainformites in orbit and hundreds more built and ready for launch, Vodafone stated.
Vodafone separately plans to offer sainformite connections to its customers applying standard smartphones with its partner AST SpaceMobile, but has yet to set a date for services to launch.
(Reporting by Paul SandleEditing by Peter Graff)
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