Elon Musk’s Starlink To Compete With Reliance And Airtel For Satellite Broadband Operations In India

The Indian government might approve the voice and data communication services of Elon Musk’s Starlink. Starlink will be given a global mobile personal communication by satellite services (GMPCS) license to offer services after completing the security check.

The Elon Musk-led company has now agreed to obey the requirement of data storage being done locally in order to hold an Indian license. The GMPCS license will allow Starlink to offer messaging services, voice services and broadband to people and organizations.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio and Sunil Mittal’s OneWeb have already got the GMPCS license. If the government approves the license for Starlink, it will be the third satellite communication company to receive this license.

Other than the GMPCS license, Starlink also has to get approval from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre. The Indian government is currently waiting for the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on how to assign spectrum or radio frequencies for satellite services in India. The recommendations will arrive as soon as TRAI gets a new chairman.

This is not the first try of Elon Musk to set foot in the Indian Satcom market. They took advance money from subscribers for services when they never had a license. The ministry then asked them to start refunding the money to the subscribers who pre-booked.

They were forced to return the pre-booking money to the customers after the Department of Telecommunications in India asked them to get the regulatory approvals first. OneWeb and Reliance Jio are trying to launch their services soon to get a head start over Starlink.