Amazon picks South Africa’s Herotel for its first satellite internet deal in Africa

Amazon’s satellite internet business, Amazon Leo, announced on 15 July 2026 that South African internet provider Herotel would sell its service to homes and small businesses, in what the company described as its first agreement of this kind in Africa.

The service will be sold under a new brand, evry, and is expected to launch commercially for residential customers in 2027. No prices or packages were announced. It is aimed at farms, small towns and rural areas that fibre and fixed wireless networks do not reach.

Herotel, a subsidiary of the fibre group Maziv, was founded in 2014 and has absorbed more than 30 smaller regional providers. Amazon said Herotel has more than 350,000 active customers in over 550 towns and 120 local offices, which will handle installation and support.

Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is a network of satellites in low Earth orbit, about 590 km up. Amazon said it had deployed more than 390 satellites out of a planned constellation of over 3,200, and that it expected to begin initial service in 2026 at certain latitudes. The service was not yet live when the deal was announced.

The structure of the agreement matters as much as the technology. Trevor Vieweg, global head of Amazon Leo, said Amazon would not need its own licence from the telecoms regulator. “Herotel will be holding the licences in this agreement,” he said, according to the Daily Maverick. South African rules require licensed telecoms companies to have 30% local ownership by historically disadvantaged groups, a requirement that rival Starlink, owned by SpaceX, has not met; the Daily Maverick reported that Starlink had not applied for a licence.

“We have always believed that South Africans outside the major metros deserve reliable, affordable internet,” Herotel chief executive Van Zyl Botha said in Amazon’s announcement.