Starlink Sets Sights on India with Multi-Partner Strategy

Starlink, Elon Musk's SpaceX venture, which offers satellite broadband, is actively exploring partnerships in India with a range of players across the satcom, telecom, and broadband sectors. Companies like Hughes, Nelco (of the Tata Group), and BSNL are in talks with the company. According to people familiar with the matter, Starlink intends to pursue an India strategy that combines direct operations with partnerships.

Starlink is employing a parallel strategy in India that has worked successfully in other international markets. It has sought out Indian telecom partners for distributing its service to customers that these companies can reach. India's third-largest telecom operator, Vodafone Idea, has also expressed interest in engaging with satcom providers such as Starlink. This signals a growing appetite for satellite internet services to meet  the  demand for rural and remote connectivity.

Infrastructure Plans and Market Readiness

Starlink is all set to serve even as it awaits the last clearance from the regulators. It has, however, made a public show of setting up its infrastructure in India in a big way and has very much signaled its intent to begin service as soon as the licensing is in place. To that end, it has operational plans here that call for three gateway stations to be set up in Mumbai, Pune, and Indore, along with what it calls a point of presence in Mumbai to anchor its operations across the subcontinent.

Starlink has a huge global capacity already because it has sent so many satellites into space. It has 30,000 second-generation satellites in the pipeline; these will beam down even better internet signals than the first-generation satellites. Starlink has a reassurance in internal assessments that its bandwidth capability and coverage in India far exceeds anything else from the other satellite companies currently in the Indian market.

Regulatory and Security Challenges

Although much of the regulatory groundwork is close to being finished, several sticking points remain. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) wants companies that offer satellite services to set up monitoring across India's borders, including in sensitive regions like Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. This isn't something Starlink has committed to yet, and it has consequently slowed final approvals.

The company, however, has consented to set up a control and monitoring center for the domestic network and certified it would not route data through gateways in countries that share a land border with India, in line with national security priorities. It has also furnished In-SPACe, the Indian space regulator, with the necessary paperwork and is said to be on the verge of obtaining the requisite licenses that come under the GMPCS umbrella. In India, Starlink is focused on bringing broadband to areas that have no access at all or only very poor access to the internet. Its main push is in the North-East and other remote terrains.