Barely a day after Bharti Airtel announced its agreement with SpaceX to offer Starlink services in the country, Reliance Industries’ digital services arm Jio Platforms announced it signed a deal with Elon Musk’s satellite communications (satcom) company to offer Starlink broadband internet services to its customers in India. However, SpaceX is yet to receive any authorisation to sell Starlink in India.
Reliance Jio Group CEO Mathew Oommen said, “By integrating Starlink into Jio's broadband ecosystem, we are expanding our reach and enhancing the reliability and accessibility of high-speed broadband in this AI-driven era.”
SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell said that SpaceX was looking forward to “receiving authorization from the Government of India to provide more people, organizations and businesses with access to Starlink’s high-speed internet services.”
Airtel on Tuesday also announced that it signed an agreement with SpaceX to offer Starlink services in India. This came as quite the surprise since the Sunil Mittal-led carrier has a 21.2 per cent stake in Starlink rival Eutelsat OneWeb, which recently bagged the necessary permissions to begin India operations, awaiting spectrum allocation.
Airtel and SpaceX look to offer Starlink equipment at Airtel retail stores and Starlink services via Airtel to business customers, along with exploring options to connect institutions—schools and health centres, among others—in even the most remote parts of the country. In contrast, Jio stated: “Jio will not only offer Starlink equipment in its retail outlets but will establish a mechanism to support customer service installation and activation.”
Airtel in its statement, however, stressed that the agreement with SpaceX is subject to receiving the necessary authorisations. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is yet to issue any recommendations on the spectrum pricing of satcom services.
At the recent India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2024, both Airtel and Jio urged authorities to urge satellite firms to pay license fees and buy airwaves for telecom services. "They need to buy the spectrum as the telecom companies do, and need to pay the license as the telecom companies do, and also secure the networks of the telecom companies,” Sunil Mittal said then.
Satcom companies, including SpaceX opposed the auction system in spectrum allocation, with Elon Musk even asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi at one instance, if it was too much trouble to have Starlink provide internet services in the country.
Telecom companies currently pay 8 per cent of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) as licence fee every year, along with a separate annual spectrum fee and an additional fee upfront for receiving the rights of their usage. However, Starlink has pitched for allocation of spectrum at less than 1 per cent of its total AGR.
