{"id":261524,"date":"2025-03-18T16:57:05","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T16:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/18\/india-needs-satellite-internet-minister-says-in-boost-to-musks-starlink\/"},"modified":"2025-03-18T16:57:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T16:57:05","slug":"india-needs-satellite-internet-minister-says-in-boost-to-musks-starlink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/18\/india-needs-satellite-internet-minister-says-in-boost-to-musks-starlink\/","title":{"rendered":"India Needs Satellite Internet, Minister Says in Boost to Musk’s Starlink"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"India<\/div>


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India needs satellite internet especially in its rural areas, its telecom minister said, a positive regulatory sign for Elon Musk’s Starlink<\/a> which has aspirations to\u00a0operate<\/a>\u00a0in the world’s most-populous nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many remote corners of the country where you cannot take fiber or mobile connectivity. How do you do 100 percent saturation if you don’t have satellite internet?\u201d Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said in an interview in New Delhi Tuesday. He added that satellite<\/a> connectivity will be \u201cthe only way that you can activate things\u201d if natural disasters destroy towers and fiber networks.<\/p>\n

Emphasising the complementary \u2014 and not competitive \u2014 role played by these services, Scindia said India was committed to offer consumers terrestrial, fiber as well as satellite communications.<\/p>\n

The minister’s remarks underscore the solid backing for these services from the Narendra Modi-led government. It also bolsters global firms vying for an Indian entry, including Starlink, Amazon’s\u00a0Project Kuiper<\/a>\u00a0and OneWeb.<\/p>\n

While Starlink is yet to secure a regulatory license to start operations in India and is awaiting local rules on spectrum pricing, many things are beginning to align for the US firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, it announced alliances with two Indian wireless operators \u2014- Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm<\/a>\u00a0and Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 winning over those who had earlier\u00a0opposed<\/a>\u00a0Starlink being granted cheap airwaves.<\/p>\n

\u2018Open for Anyone’<\/h3>\n

\u201cIndia’s market is open for anyone and everyone who wants to come and participate in this large market and provide a service,\u201d Scindia said. \u201cUltimately it’s the consumer that has to decide who they will go with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scindia declined to comment on when Starlink may get the license or what price satellite internet firms will be asked to pay for airwaves.<\/p>\n

India’s telecom regulator is making rules on the latter and how the spectrum is priced will influence the cost of satellite broadband for users in India.<\/p>\n

India is the world’s second-largest internet market, trailing China. Phone data charges are as low as $0.11 (roughly Rs. 9.52) per gigabyte, among the lowest in the world, and any entrant will be fighting for users in a price-sensitive market.<\/p>\n

Security Conditions<\/h3>\n

Scindia said the firms will decide the pricing of their satellite internet services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Global firms, including SpaceX’s Starlink, will also need to satisfy India’s internal and external security conditions before securing a license. Rival OneWeb as well as Reliance Jio’s\u00a0JioSpaceFiber<\/a>\u00a0has already got the local licenses to start operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually it’ll be an economies of scale argument that’ll come through,\u201d Scindia said. \u201cAt this point of time, let the market be penetrated first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9\u00a02025\u00a0Bloomberg LP<\/em><\/p>\n

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India needs satellite internet especially in its rural areas, its telecom minister said, a positive regulatory sign for Elon Musk’s Starlink which has aspirations to\u00a0operate\u00a0in the world’s most-populous nation. \u201cThere are many remote corners of the country where you cannot take fiber or mobile connectivity. How do you do 100 percent saturation if you don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.gadgets360cdn.com\/large\/large_81_1734526522517.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[1919,1778,273,201550,1426,19897,2124,2535,1666,66565,30088],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261526,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261524\/revisions\/261526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}