The Satcom Association of India (SIA-India) has written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for allowing the satellite gateways to operate on the spectrum in the 27.5 GHz - 28.5 GHz band. The industry body said that such a move is crucial for developing and enhancing the national infrastructure to roll out new broadband services, which also includes 5G.
Further, according to an ET Telecom report, SIA-India also wrote to TRAI for overseeing that the licensing procedures should also include and address gateway earth stations for the purpose of an interconnecting telecommunications network, including a hub for Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT), GMPCS Systems, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and MSS-R.
Don’t Link License of Gateway Earth Station With the License for Providing Satellite Based Services
In November, TRAI had asked whether there is a requirement of creating a separate license for the satellite earth station gateways. SIA-India said that the license of the gateway earth station should not be linked with a license for providing satellite-based services.
The industry body said that a separate license for the gateway earth stations would result in economic benefit to the companies in the satcom sector. SIA-India said that creating a separate framework for gateway license would enable infrastructure sharing and avoid duplication of investment which would reduce the capex involved by the companies in rolling out new services. Further, it would facilitate the faster rollout of new services.
On top of this, SIA-India asked TRAI to allow service providers to obtain access to satellite capacity through a partnership with satellite operators which have the associated space asset authorisation.
TRAI is working on coming out with the best possible set of policies and regulations around the satellite-based services, which will see increasing their dominance with the coming year where the likes of Starlink, OneWeb, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper would become a part of India’s network and connectivity ecosystem.
