Nigeria has granted seven-year commercial satellite permits to Amazon's Kuiper Systems, Israel's NSLComm BeetleSat, and Germany-based Satelio IoT Services, joining Elon Musk-owned SpaceX among operators cleared to expand space-based broadband, the Nigerian Communications Commission NCC said on Thursday.
The permits were issued under the NCC's commercial satellite communications guidelines, a licensing framework designed to attract investment and advance next-generation non-geostationary satellite NGSO systems in Nigeria, Africa's largest telecoms market.
Amazon's Kuiper Systems received a licence to provide Ka-band services over Nigeria via its 3,236-satellite Project Kuiper from February 2026 to February 2033. NSLComm's BeetleSat-1 network, which plans to deploy 264 satellites, also gained clearance, while Satelio IoT was approved for its 491-satellite IoT system, although only one of its satellites is currently in orbit.
