As Elon Musk continues his battle with India over Starlink’s delayed entry, the SpaceX founder has raised two essential questions for Indians: Why is Starlink facing delays in entering the country, and is the telecom industry really dominated by a couple of “oligarchs”?
Why is Starlink facing delays?
For starters, the Indian satcom industry is still developing and is not actively used by citizens. According to the Ministry of Communications, satcom licences have been granted to three Global Mobile Personal Communication companies, which include SpaceX-owned Starlink, Airtel-owned Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance-owned Jio Satellite Communications. The ministry said they are currently undergoing security assessment before being launched for regular consumers.
Satcom services carry significant operational and security risks because they rely on complex software that can have vulnerabilities.
In 2024, Indian authorities said they recovered Starlink equipment during a drug smuggling investigation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and another army operation in Manipur.
Starlink also shut down services when Ukraine reiterated in September 2022, despite the country being dependent on the network after terrestrial infrastructure was damaged by Russia’s invasion. Musk’s moves were also entirely legal according to the company’s terms and conditions in Ukraine.
However, this concern takes a back seat in India, as providers don’t have the independent legal authority to cut off internet access. But they are legally obligated to comply when the federal or state authorities issue an order. This applies regardless of whether the companies are foreign or domestic.
Providers like Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Jio have frequently shut down internet in regions like Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan ahead of citizen protests, communal tensions or exams.
Starlink’s delay cannot be attributed to protecting domestic players, as the British Vodafone dominated the terrestrial telecom market for many years.
The company might not even be direct competition, as Starlink’s residential plans in the US start at $55 a month and are comparitevely pricier than terrestrial networks.
Internet access remains uneven in India despite relatively low prices from BSNL. This raises questions about how affordable Starlink’s service would be for Indians.
Is the telecom industry really dominated by a couple of “oligarchs”?
While the satcom market is untouched, the terrestrial network telecom industry is an oligopoly dominated by three private companies: Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi). The fourth player is the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
Reliance Jio holds a 39.25 per cent market share, making it the largest telecom operator in the country. Though the company entered the competition only in September 2016, Jio’s aggressive pricing strategy completely rewrote India’s telecom segment.
The British subsidiary of Racal Electronics, Vodafone and the Birla-owned Idea Cellular, which were independent companies till 2018, were forced into a defensive merger to survive Jio’s market strategy. Jio overtook Bharti Airtel’s dominance in the market, though the company remains Jio’s primary competitor, surviving by matching prices and upgrading its network. The state-owned BSNL struggled to modernise at the pace of private operators and gradually lost its market share.
