Elon Musk's Starlink Receives India's Final Regulatory Nod For Launch: Report

New Delhi: Elon Musk-owned Starlink has finally got approval from India’s space regulator —Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), clearing the last regulatory hurdle to kick off commercial satellite Internet services in India. With this nod, Starlink is expected to acquire spectrum now from the government, establish ground infrastructure, and demonstrate compliance with national security requirements through trials and testing, a top source privy to development said on Wednesday.

As part of its rollout plan, the company now intends to establish at least three gateway stations nationwide. Since 2022, Starlink has been waiting for the Centre’s permission to operate its services commercially in India. This prior IN-SPACe’s nod comes just weeks after it secured its Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) licence from the DoT, positioning it as the third player — after Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance Jio — to gain full regulatory approval for satellite internet services in the country.

Confirming the development, IN-SPACe said on its website that it has granted a licence to Starlink to offer space-based internet services in the country. “INSPACe) has granted authorisation to Starlink satellite communications to enable the provisioning of Starlink Gen1 Constellation capacity over India. The authorisation is valid for a five-year period,” it said.

Starlink has already signed its first commercial deal with very small aperture terminal or VSAT providers in India, signaling its intention to start monetising enterprise and government broadband services even before satellite spectrum allocation is finalised. VSAT is a satellite communication technology that uses small earth stations to transmit and receive data, voice, and video signals via satellite.

Joining the ranks of OneWeb, backed by Eutelsat and Reliance Jio’s satcom arm, Starlink, unlike its rivals, has also the global experience of operating in more than 70 countries, and its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation is already among the largest in the world. “The DoT is now also set to grant trial spectrum soon to Starlink to complete security compliance demonstrations,” the source said.

The source, however, said that with these partnerships, Starlink intends to build a presence in both the B2B and B2G segments while laying the groundwork for a future consumer-facing rollout. “The company could soon begin offering direct-to-consumer satellite connections via its website, although retail pricing strategies are still being finalised,” the source added.

Starlink’s is a way ahead of its biggest rival Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which is still awaiting regulatory approvals from both the DoT and IN-SPACe, despite having completed all security and operational checks. For a long time, Kuiper’s application has been lined up for the review, and it will be taken in the upcoming inter-ministerial standing committee meeting.