The Indian government is reportedly considering relaxing the satcom (satellite communications) security norms so that players like Starlink and Amazon Kuiper can enter the market. So far, the foreign satcom companies have not managed to get the GMPCS (global mobile personal communication by satellite) license due to security norms that the government has set in place. However, as per an ET report, the government is looking to relax rules which would then allow companies to remotely manage satellite networks. Along with this, the rule of latitude-longitude binding of fixed satellite terminals will be removed.
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The government has invited comments from major players including Bharti baked Eutelsat OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, Reliance Jio-SES, and Starlink. The report said that Amazon has asked for time until at least mid-January to comment on this. However, industry experts have questioned this move. Relaxing these rules can pose a very major security threat to India.
Basically, if the latitude-longitude binding is removed, a terminal could be bought at one place and then used at another. Currently, the rules dictate that if the terminal is bought in a particular geolocation, then it will only work there. Starlink has been looking to enter the Indian market for some time now. SpaceX-owned satcom company had been asked by the telecom department to refund the pre-booking amount it had charged from customers in 2021.
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Since then, there have been no major developments that indicated the company's entry into the Indian market. The only question here is why the government would suddenly relax these rules to let foreign players into the market? Is it just a move to cosy up to Elon Musk who has a sway over the president-elect Donald Trump. The coming months are going to be interesting, so stay tuned!
