SpaceX owned satellite broadband company Starlink is going to keep its focus on the regions where it gets the most amount of pre-orders from. Sanjay Bhargava, India Head for Starlink, said that getting government approval for providing services is a very complex process. Thus the company wants to target a quick approval for its pilot programme, and the best way to do that is by focusing on the pre-orders that the company is getting from different regions of the country.
But this has a created a lot of drama in the industry. A lot of people and industry bodies have a problem with Starlink selling pre-orders in India. For the unaware, last year, Starlink started selling pre-orders worth $99 in India and said that it will start providing services from 2022.
Starlink Will Focus on Ten Rural Lok Sabha Constituencies for 80% of Terminals Shipped
As per an ET Telecom report, Sanjay Bhargava said that Starlink would keep its focus on ten rural Lok Sabha constituencies for 80% of the terminals it will ship to India. Bhargava said that the number of pre-orders it gets from the rural constituencies would be one of the factors that will help the company decide about the regions it wants to focus on.
Starlink wants to move fast with the pre-orders program, and it is understandable since the company doesn’t want to miss out on the market share because of the competition from OneWeb and other satellite broadband companies that are coming to India.
Rural India will be one of the biggest markets for satellite broadband companies, and no private company coming to the sector would want to miss out on the revenues or the market share. Bhargava said that Starlink would apply for the necessary approvals very soon. But the company doesn’t want to sit around and do nothing until that happens, thus the pre-orders.
