Vodafone Idea (Vi), the third-largest telecom opereator in the country, is planning to counter Elon Musk's Starlink. Note that this is not a direct competition as of now. Here's the situation in simple words. Starlink is soon going to start services in India. While Vodafone Idea is not a satcom (satellite communications) service provider, it is still a competitor of a sort to Starlink. Both are into connectivity services, but they differ in the technology they use. To improve network coverage in India, Vodafone Idea had announced a partnership with AST Spacemobile. This will allow Vodafone Idea to offer space based cellular services to users with regular smartphones.
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It will be a signficant improvement in coverage experience for the users as satellite signals can also reach deep forests, where terrestrial networks aren't present. This is what Starlink also aims to do. Starlink, in fact, recently launched Direct-to-Cell services, wherein it will also introduce calling and data capabilities soon too.
This will be in direct contention to what Vodafone Idea and AST Spacemobile intends to do. Vodafone Idea needs to do something different that Airtel and Jio, and this is that different. This partnership is expected to bring fruitful results for everyone, including the two companies and the consumers.
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Vodafone Idea already has all the regulatory approvals, but the satcom service company needs it too. Without the approval from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), things won't move along. AST Spacemobile will require a GMPCS (Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite) license to start offering services in India. While AST Spacemobile could have worked separately, however, with Vi, the partnership will help in getting a higher distribution from the company.
