Three of the world’s richest men may soon open another battlefront in India. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk (the world’s richest men) have been talking to the telecom ministry to offer satellite-based internet connectivity in India. They will be taking on India’s richest man Reliance Jio’s Mukesh Ambani and Airtel’s Sunil Mittal.
Musk’s company, Starlink, has already appointed Sanjay Bhargava, who had worked with PayPal, as the country director for India. But both companies have not formally applied for licenses yet. OneWeb, a company in which Mittal’s Bharti Global holds the largest stake, had also earlier announced plans of launching satellite-based services in India. It has secured a national long distance (NLD) license from the telecom department.
What is satellite internet?
The internet service is provided by a network of satellites in low earth orbit. The user makes a connection to these satellites through a dish (similar to the ones used for direct-to-home television).
Speed
Satellite-based internet gives decent speed, usually from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps. It might go up to 300 Mbps soon. This is, however, no match for the 50 Mbps to over 1 Gbps speed that a sophisticated 5G network can offer. Even the fibre-based internet offers better speeds.
Advantages
The biggest advantage is that the technology eliminates the need for extensive ground infrastructure. Even remote rural areas with little conventional connectivity will be able to get high-speed internet. This can be beneficial for India, where there are plenty of holes in the connectivity blanket.
Disadvantages
Heavy rain or wind can disrupt the connection.
There could be latency (the time it takes for data to be transferred between a source and destination) because of the direct involvement of satellites.
