Decks cleared for Musk’s satellite communication in India

American billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink has been granted license to launch its satellite communication service in India

New Delhi: American billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink has been granted license to launch its satellite communication service in India.

Citing Department of Telecom (DoT) sources, news agency PTI said Starlink would be granted trial spectrum in 15-20 days of applying for it.

Starlink is the 3rd private player to get the license from DoT to provide satellite internet and telecom services in India. The other two are Eutelsat's OneWeb and Reliance Jio.

The DoT license to Starlink comes over two months after Musk owned SpaceX announced it has signed deals with Bharti AirTel and Reliance Jio to offer satellite communication facility in India.

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the aerospace company SpaceX.

Spectrum Allocation

While confirming the DoT license to Starlink, Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had on Thursday said that the spectrum allocation would follow after the licensing process.

"And after this, the government will provide the spectrum. Subsequently, satellite telecom services will be fully operational in the country at a rapid pace. I am sure the customer base in India will grow substantially," Scindia said while talking to press.

"Starlink's satellite connectivity is a significant addition to the telecommunications services," he added.

Satellite internet is slower than broadband internet. It, however, has the advantage of offering services in areas where the infrastructure needed for broadband internet is not available.

Starlink had earlier tried to provide Satellite connectivity in India back in 2021. It had even started taking pre-orders from customers. The Indian government asked the company to return the money to customers and stop taking new orders as it did not have the required license then.

India's broadband market is currently dominated by Reliance Jio with more than 14 million wired subscribers as against 300 million broadband subscribers of Bharti Airtel.

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