The next frontier for telcos in India

Satellite internet services, expected to commence operations in 2024, is a big opportunity for both telcos in India and the global firms

- VERNIKA AWAL

On 27 October, Akash Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm, the tech and telecom division under Reliance Industries, announced the launch of JioSpaceFiber. Taking the stage on the same day at the 2023 India Mobile Congress, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Airtel's parent firm Bharti Enterprises, announced that OneWeb and Airtel's satellite internet services were ready to commence operating in India in November itself.

While neither has started services in the country yet, the announcements stand testament to the approach that the two major telecom operators have taken by signalling satellite-based network services as the next big frontier for the robust telecom industry in India.

But it is not just Jio and Airtel that are vying for a slice of this nascent, yet-to-launch subset of the networking and telecommunications sector in the country - Elon Musk-backed satellite internet services firm, Starlink, has also procured a licence from the Department of Telecommunications in India to offer its services here. Jeff Bezos and Amazon-backed Project Kuiper, which is a step behind the rest in terms of launching its satellites, has also made a beeline to launch similar services in the country.

All of this makes the satellite internet industry a hotly contested one to follow, even before services have commenced. While the regulatory hurdle of spectrum allocation is the key bottleneck that all companies are waiting to get resolved, bets made by major domestic and global corporations show that the satellite communications, or satcom industry of India, is likely to be the next big frontier for telcos to take on.

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