Musk’s Starlink sees its capacity underused without rural India onboard
“A very large percentage of Starlink users (worldwide) are residential users living in rural areas, and a very large percentage of those users are people for whom Starlink is the first choice for truly great broadband,” Parnil Urdhwareshe, director of Starlink Satellite Communications, said at the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi.
According to Urdhwareshe, the actual number of users that Starlink can serve in the Mumbai metro will be one-tenth of the number of users it can serve in rural areas of a region.
Starlink’s comments are important as telecom operators voice concerns before the government that satellite internet services will compete with them and eat into their market share by reaching elite users in urban areas.
“We are now in more than 150 markets and in each of these markets our goal has always been to complement existing services and ensure that similar quality internet is available in urban areas or rural areas,” Urdhwareshe said.
Rollout plans
Starlink is creating the necessary infrastructure to launch satellite internet services in the country. The company will compete with companies like Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio Satellite, which have government permission to launch satellite internet services.
The only hurdle now is spectrum allocation to these companies, which the department of telecommunications (DoT) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) are working on.
Starlink received authorization for Generation 1 constellation capability over India from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) in July, according to information on the space regulator’s website. This was a month after the company awarded its critical Satellite (GMPCS) license to Starlink, marking a major milestone in its entry into the Indian market after a three-year wait.
The GMPCS license allows companies to offer voice and data services via satellite. The license is granted for 20 years and allows companies to provide satellite communications services in licensed service areas.
Pricing for Starlink’s broadband services in India has not been announced yet. The company currently has more than 8,400 satellites in orbit around the world.
In July, minister of state for communications Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani had said that Starlink could only have 20 lakh customers in India and could offer speeds of up to 200 Mbps. This will not affect telecom services. The minister also said that the upfront cost of the satcom service will be very high and the monthly cost is likely to be around Rs. ₹3,000.
In March, Starlink’s parent company SpaceX tied up with Bharti Airtel and Jio Platforms, India’s largest telecom operators, to potentially distribute Starlink equipment through retail stores and offer services to commercial customers, schools and healthcare centres.
“Forty percent of India’s population does not have internet access, with rural areas accounting for the majority of these cases. This represents a major market opportunity for Starlink,” broker Bernstein said in its March 4 report. he said.
Clarity on spectrum pricing
As suggested by Trai and considered by DoT, satcom companies will either have to pay annual spectrum charges of 4% of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) or ₹3,500 per MHz, whichever is higher. Additionally, Trai also recommended charging an additional annual fee. ₹500 per subscriber for such service providers in urban areas.
Satcom operators will also have to pay an annual authorization fee of 8% of adjusted gross revenue to the government, as per DoT’s existing authorization terms.
On September 16, Mint The DoT reportedly did not accept the fees suggested by the industry regulator for satellite internet providers such as Starlink, OneWeb and Jio Satellite. DoT wants regulator to review additional annual fee ₹Satellite service providers serving high-paying users in urban areas will receive $500 per subscriber, one of the sources said. Concerns stem from the difficulty of distinguishing between subscribers in urban and rural areas, which can become a gray area and make it difficult to monitor or prevent potential breaches.
The ministry is yet to give an official reference to Trai on the matter.
On Wednesday, the Broadband India Forum (BIF), which represents satellite communications service providers, said satellite spectrum prices should be reviewed by Trai and kept lower.
“Spectrum prices need to be kept at a minimum level for rural areas and should be lower than what is suggested by Trai,” Debashish Bhattacharya, senior deputy managing director of Broadband India Forum, said at a session at the Indian Mobile Congress.
The industry has also asked the government to expedite the allocation of satellite spectrum in the country so that commercial services can begin.
“We strongly recommend that spectrum allocation happens at the earliest. We understand that this (launch of satellite internet services) is happening for the first time in India, but the delay leads to an opportunity cost for players,” said Anil Kumar Bhatt, director general of Indian Space Association (IspA), also at the India Mobile Congress. IspA represents satellite communications service providers as its members.
