Battle for Satellite Broadband Hots up in India

Elon Musk appears to be the next in queue readying for a battle royale with India’s behemoth Reliance. This time, the battle has shifted to outer space with Musk’s satellite based broadband service Starlink seeking approvals from the Department of Telecommunications to kickstart operations after an earlier aborted attempt. 

Published media reports said Starlink has sought approvals this time, unlike the last time round when the government agencies had asked Musk’s company to abort the mission which was announced to the media first and then went to the extent of seeking applications from the public in preparation of a rollout. 

The race for outer space is hot

If the government does accord all the approvals to Musk, still smarting from the earlier attempt as also his failure to launch the Tesla brand of EVs into the Indian market, it would make it the third company in line for a slice of this nascent market reportedly to be worth $13 billion over the next two to three years. The others are Bharti-backed OneWeb and Jio’s satellite arm. 

Jio Satellite Communications, a joint venture between Reliance and SES of Luxembourg, had submitted its applications earlier this year and the DoT had approved the same for launch of a global mobile personal communication service by satellite. Now, it remains to be seen if Musk steals a march over Jio and OneWeb, whose launch is stuck due to the Ukraine war. 

But, that’s not all, there are others already warming up to this story. Tata-backed Nelco and Canada’s Telesat and Amazon are also reportedly considering satellite-based internet services. Of course, we aren’t sure what caused Elon Musk to bite the bullet and make another attempt to bring Starlink to India, after having to face the ignominy of being forced to bail out last year. 

Looks like Musk learnt his lessons

Media reports suggest that SpaceX would apply for the requisite licenses besides seeking the statutory approvals for landing rights and market access. The latter part is critical as it would help SpaceX set up earth stations in India and deploy global satellite bandwidth capacity. These approvals are needed from the Indian National Space Promotion & Authorisation Center (IN-SPACe)-a central regulatory body mandated to attract private capital in the space sector.

Billionaire Elon Musk hasn’t had the best of interactions with the Indian administration and the political top brass in the past. First it was his popular EV brand Tesla that set up offices and announced its passenger car launch, only to be later upbraided by the ruling BJP government which said Tesla is welcome only once it commits to manufacturing in India. 

How the initial launch was aborted

As for the launch of Starlink, this was an even bigger instance of egg on Musk’s face as the company had even hired a CEO, who then went on a social media campaign spree announcing the local entity and urging prospective customers to apply for a Starlink satellite connection in order to avoid a waitlist by paying $99 upfront. 

It became quite obvious that Musk and his band of merry men had put the cart before the horse and gone to town without actually completing due diligence of any kind. The government’s response was also typical – they didn’t go to the media. Instead the twitter handle DoT India merely issued a public advisory asking users not to loosen their purse strings yet. 

The DoT message on Twitter said Starlink was not authorized to offer satellite based broadband connections in India and that it had asked the company to cease and desist from whatever it was doing. More specifically, it asked them to stop accepting applications for Starlink services. The fun part was that the Twitter handle also gave some sane advice to Musk and Co. telling them in no uncertain terms that “for rendering satellite-based services in India, requisite license(s) from DoT were required.” 

This forced Starlink to backtrack at a furious pace as the company removed its pre-booking page – in fact removed the ask for money and instead announced that Starlink was not available in the country and asked users to check back later.