Billionaires Mittal and Ambani are taking on Musk in India’s internet space race

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India’s largest telecom companies, led by rival billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal, are poised to launch satellite internet services as they challenge Elon Musk’s efforts to establish Starlink in the country.

Bharti Airtel’s joint venture with Eutelsat OneWeb, the Anglo-French satellite communications group, could launch as early as June, with Ambani’s JioSpaceFiber expected to follow later this year, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Musk’s SpaceX, which owns Starlink, has been trying to enter the country for more than three years but has failed to receive regulatory approval and was reprimanded by local authorities in 2021 for signing up customers without having the proper licenses .

During Narendra Modi’s visit to the US last year, Musk told the Indian prime minister that he was keen to bring Starlink to the country with the aim of serving isolated regions that had little or no high-speed internet.

Mittal’s company has taken the lead in India’s internet race. Unlike its competitors, it has received all necessary approvals and can start operating immediately once the new government allocates satellite spectrum after the national elections that ended in early June. Modi will govern in a coalition alliance after his Bharatiya Janata Party lost its outright majority.

“Once you have connectivity, people tend not to change providers,” said Santosh Tiwari, a Bengaluru-based partner at consultancy EY Parthenon, which estimates that satellite internet is a potential $1 billion revenue market in India.

“The focus will be on business-to-business internet – that’s where most of the money will come from,” Tiwari said. “Retail internet in those areas, that rollout may take more time.”

Bharti Airtel was in talks to provide internet to the Indian army and navy in remote areas without conventional broadband services, one of the people close to the company said, adding that it had “an edge over the competition” .

Ambani’s Reliance Industries, owner of India’s largest telecom network with just over half of the country’s 924 million wireless and wired broadband subscribers, is still waiting for the nod from the nation’s space industry regulator, IN-SPACe.

The full rollout of JioSpaceFiber, Reliance’s joint venture with Luxembourg satellite network provider SES, may be outlined at the conglomerate’s annual meeting. The meeting usually takes place in August, when Ambani was known to make major announcements, one of the people said.

The product will serve as a small business-to-business “niche” offering, with Jio’s primary focus remaining on expanding broadband internet access across the country of 1.4 billion people, another said.

But even if Ambani and Mittal can win approval before Musk, it’s unlikely they’ll ever be able to rival Starlink’s network of more than 6,000 low-orbit satellites and SpaceX’s near-monopoly on reusable rockets, with more than 100 launches. prediction this year.

Starlink was well established and “could take off quickly” in India, an industry executive said, but “they don’t have a gateway into the country, they are much further behind”.

India’s local media reported in April that the carrier had received preliminary approval from the country’s telecom ministry ahead of Musk’s much-anticipated trip to New Delhi, where he was expected to announce the establishment of a Tesla factory.

But Musk canceled the visit at the last minute and traveled to neighboring rival China. Since then, there have been no further updates on approvals from Starlink or the Tesla factory.

Bharti Airtel, Reliance, SpaceX, along with India’s space regulator and the ministry of telecommunications, did not respond to requests for comment.

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