Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run telecom operator, seems to have an edge over the competition in the satcom (satellite communications) industry in India. Players such as Starlink, Eutelsab OneWeb (backed by Bharti Group), and Jio-SES, (backed by Reliance), have not even started services yet, while BSNL is already serving clients.
BSNL is already offering satellite connectivity services to security agencies and strategic users in India along with the government agencies. The state-run telco is paying 1% of AGR (adjusted gross revenue) as the spectrum charges. For the private telcos, a 4% charge on the AGR dues has been recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
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The pricing may be revised as the DoT (Department of Telecommunications) has not accepted this recommendation from the TRAI. BSNL will likely have the advantage here as it will continue to pay 1% owing to the strategic requirements from the government. The big advantage that BSNL has here is that it will get spectrum at a much lower cost.
That means that the telco might be able to offer services at a much lower cost. Note that even as BSNL provides satellite communication services right now to the users, they are not direct-to-device services. The telco is only offering enterprise services to the companies and angencies in India. The B2B domain will be different from B2C segment in the country.
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Companies like Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio-SES will likely give strong competition to BSNL. The Direct-t0-Device market will be quite interesting to follow in India. However, things won't move ahead till the time there's no final confirmation over the regulatory policies from the government. Things should move fast in the coming months, thus, stay tuned to get updates.
