In modern conflict, the most important question is not who has the most soldiers. It is who controls the network those soldiers depend on. The war in Ukraine has made that lesson impossible to ignore.
When Russia invaded in 2022, Starlink terminals kept Ukraine’s forces and citizens connected. Yet the same network showed how fragile it is to depend on someone else’s infrastructure. In 2022, by his own later account, Starlink’s owner declined Ukraine’s request to extend coverage for an operation near Crimea. In January 2026, Russian forces began mounting Starlink terminals on long-range attack drones, which made them hard to jam and allowed them to strike targets far behind the front line. Ukraine had to ask SpaceX for help, and the fix it received was a whitelist of approved terminals and a speed cap. Poland, which pays about $50 million a year for Ukraine’s Starlink service, warned it might look for other providers if SpaceX proved unreliable.
The lesson for India is plain. A nation whose communications run through infrastructure it does not control does not fully control its own security.
Digital sovereignty is not a slogan, nor is it hostility to foreign companies. It means three concrete things: owning the networks that carry our communications, setting the rules for any system that touches Indian soil or Indian skies, and keeping Indian data under Indian law. On all three, India has moved decisively in the last decade.
The networks: from buyer to builder
For most of its telecom history, India bought its 2G, 3G, and 4G technology from foreign vendors. That changed in September 2025, when BSNL launched the Bharat Telecom Stack, built by C-DOT, Tejas Networks, and TCS. With it, India became one of only five countries to have designed and deployed its own telecom technology stack supporting 4G and beyond. Nearly 97,500 towers were commissioned at a cost of about ₹37,000 crore, all built on indigenous technology.
The outcome for citizens has been remarkable. In 2014, a gigabyte of data cost ₹268. Today, it costs about ₹8—among the cheapest anywhere in the world. India is now the world’s second-largest telecom market, with more than 1.2 billion mobile connections.
The skies: open market, Indian rules
Satellite broadband will bring connectivity to remote villages, mountains, and islands, and India has opened the sector to global operators. But it has set conditions that every serious nation should insist on. Indian user traffic cannot be routed through gateways abroad or mirrored to servers overseas. Operators must provide lawful interception, geo-fence sensitive areas, and reshape their coverage near borders so signals do not spill over. They must be able to shut off service in specific areas when national security agencies require it. They must also transition to India’s own NavIC navigation system by 2029.
These rules apply equally to everyone. Starlink’s founder has recently complained publicly about delays, but the government has made its position clear: India does not allow a monopoly in any sector, and all three satellite applicants are at broadly the same stage of evaluation. That is not obstruction. That is a sovereign state doing its job. A constellation that can reach every Indian home from orbit must be fully accountable to Indian authority before it switches on.
The data and the rules of tomorrow
The third layer is law. Parliament enacted the Digital Personal Data Protection Act in August 2023, and its Rules were notified in November 2025. Together, they create the Data Protection Board of India, with penalties for serious failures reaching up to ₹250 crore. India is also building the physical base for data sovereignty: data-centre capacity is expected to grow from around 1.5–1.8 GW in 2026 to between 5.6 and 8 GW by 2030.
At this month’s India Mobile Congress, Prime Minister Modi called for self-reliance in telecom, stronger digital security, and a global framework against deepfakes, positioning India as a creator and owner of next-generation technology. This is the right ambition. Rules for AI and digital trust will be written in this decade, and a nation of more than a billion connected citizens must help write them, not just accept them.
A choice India has already made
For centuries, India was a market for other nations’ goods and a subject of other nations’ rules. That chapter is closed. Today’s India welcomes global capital, technology, and competition, but on its own terms.
It is an open market, with the switch firmly in Indian hands. Any company is welcome to serve 1.4 billion Indians. None will be allowed to hold their communications, their data, or their security hostage.
(Rajinder Gupta is a Member of Parliament [Rajya Sabha])
(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK)
