Starlink, a SpaceX owned satellite broadband service provider is soon going to enter the Indian market. The necessary approvals will arrive soon for the company, and it can immediately start services. Starlink has already built its global constellation of LEO (low earth orbit) satellites and has much higher capacity than rivals Jio-SES and OneWeb. As per an ET report, while Jio-SES and OneWeb can offer around 30-50 Gigabytes per second (Gbps), Starlink can go beyond a terabyte per second (Tbps). Starlink will start with setting up gateways in major cities such as Indore, Pune, and Mumbai.
Starlink's arrival will not only help regular customers in getting high-speed internet in their locality, but there will be businesses that will benefit from this as well. The report said that a government official was saying that India needs to increase the satellite bandwidth immensely for the growth of satcom (satellite communications).
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When will Starlink Exactly Come to India?
There's no clear timeline announced, but it is definitely going to be soon. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, the two prominent telecom operators in India have already announced their partnership with SpaceX to offer Starlink terminals in India. The telcos will help Starlink in distributing its equipment and services throughout India through their retail presence.
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Eutelsat-OneWeb and Jio-SES have already secured the necessary approvals from the Indian government to start services in the country. However, these satcom operators are waiting for the government to start allocating spectrum. Starlink, on the other hand needs more approvals from the government to be able to start selling services in India.
An important decision from the government that everyone is waiting for here is for the spectrum. Whether the satcom spectrum will be auctioned or administratively allocated will be interesting to see.
