SpaceX teams up with Airtel and Jio for Indian satellite internet push

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has partnered with India’s top two telcos, Reliance Jio and  Bharti Airtel, to bring Starlink’s satellite internet services to business customers and remote communities in India. The partnership will also allow SpaceX to sell Starlink devices in India through retail outlets and online stores run by Jio and Airtel. Jio will also provide customer service to install and activate Starlink devices. 

Partnership with Indian telcos should boost SpaceX’s efforts to roll out internet services in India and ease its chances of getting the government license to sell Starlink devices in the country. Last month, Elon Musk also met the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington DC, US to reportedly discuss business opportunities. 

“Starlink complements JioAirFiber and JioFiber by extending high speed internet to the most challenging of locations in a quick and affordable manner,” Reliance Jio said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday. Airtel also said in a press release that it is looking to leverage the partnership to offer internet services to communities, schools, and health centres in rural India.  

This marks a significant progress for the US company, which has faced delays in its India expansion for the past three years. 

In November 2021, Starlink Satellite Communications Private Limited (SSCPL)  was registered in India and Sanjay Bhargava, a former PayPal employee, was appointed as country director. 

Soon after the registry, Starlink started offering pre-bookings to Indian users at $99. However, it had to halt its operations after it was ordered by the government to stop pre-bookings as the company didn’t have the license to offer internet services in India. In January 2022, Bhargava resigned from his position citing personal reasons. 

Starlink’s roll out in India was further complicated by the opposition from Indian telcos and legal ambiguity around spectrum allocation for satcom services.

Airtel and Jio have been advocating for auctions to allocate spectrum for satellite internet to ensure a level-playing field for terrestrial operators like them and avoid market distortions. 

In October 2024, India’s telecom ministry announced that spectrum for satellite services will be allocated by an administrative order at a price set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The telecom ministry said that the decision was in line with global practice of allocating spectrum for satellite internet services. 

In the aftermath of the 2G spectrum scam, in February 2012, the Supreme Court of India upheld that allocation of scarce public resources such as telecom spectrum should be done through auctions. 

In 2023, the government of India passed the Telecom Act 2023, which allows satcom spectrum to be allocated through administrative order. 

Though the internet user base in India has been growing rapidly and projected to grow to 900 million in 2025, according to IAMAI and Kantar, a large part of the country is still not covered by broadband services due to terrain and other geographical challenges. 

Satellite internet service providers such as SpaceX’s Starlink can address this gap by using a  constellation of internet satellites that can deliver internet connectivity anywhere on the Earth.  

These Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are smaller in size and orbit much closer to the Earth’s surface, at an altitude of 550km, in comparison to large navigation and communication satellites that orbit above 2,000 km or the satellites in geosynchronous orbit that operate from beyond 35,000 km. 

Due to their proximity to Earth’s surface, low orbit satellites can offer a better internet experience at much lower latency and without interference. 

Starlink will face competition in India from OneWeb India, a joint venture between Airtel and UK based Eutelsat OneWeb. In 2023, it became the first service provider to receive authorization from Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre

(IN-SPACE) to offer satellite broadband services in India. Last October, the telecom ministry gave permission for provisional satellite spectrum allocation for six months to conduct trials. 

Hughes India, a subsidiary of Hughes Network Systems, has also tied up with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to provide internet services to 5,000 remote villages in Ladakh and North Eastern states.

Image credit: Pixabay