Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Tuesday that the government is “happy to give” a license to American billionaire Elon Musk-owned Starlink as long as the company complies with the conditions laid down for offering services in India and addresses security concerns.
“We are more than happy to give them (license) if they (Starlink) comply with all the conditions. You have to look at it from a security perspective, making sure that all security concerns are addressed. When they do that we be more than happy to give it.” Scindia added, “Obliviously, they (Starlink) are in the process of doing it.”
Fearing that a US-based firm offering direct-top consumer service will disturb the level-playing field, two telecom majors namely Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Bharati Airtel Ltd are allegedly resisting Starlink’s entry into the Indian satellite broadband market.
The government has issued a license to Bharati Group-backed OneWeb and the Jio-SES joint venture Jio Satellite Communications. Both companies are yet to roll out their services while waiting for spectrum allocation. The government is currently working on the rules and pricing for spectrum allocation for satellite communications.
The spectrum allocation for satellite broadband remains at the center of the ongoing tussle between the two sides.
Starlink is seeking administrative spectrum allocation, while Indian carriers are pushing for the ‘the same service, same rules’ principle as the benchmark for spectrum allocation. This principle underlines the same rules for all wireless carriers offering similar services.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority (Trai) reserves the final say. Indian telecom operators and Starlink have already put forth their views at an open-house meeting recently convened by Trai.
Responding to Vodafone Idea’s query requesting a waiver of ₹27,000 crore, the telecom minister clarified that any assistance in this regard will be ‘sectoral’ and not company-specific.
Scindia added that customers have a choice with the presence of four telecom players in India and that the sector has received a tremendous boost from the government over the last two and a half years. He added, “All the assistance given till now has been given from a sectoral point of view, except for BSNL.”
The Telecom Minister added that BSNL had set up 50,000 radio access network sites for 4G, and all 100,000 sites are expected to be up by May-June 2025. He added that some of these sites would be 5G-enabled by the middle of next year.
Responding to Vodafone Ideaon’s request for adjusted gross revenue (AGR) calculations, the mister referred to the Supreme Court verdict. He said the verdict “stands as is,” if the government decides on this matter, it will be notified at the appropriate time.
Responding to a question on the removal of Chinese equipment from legacy networks, Scindia added that security cannot be compromised, and the security checks were there for all networks. He said that replacing legacy networks will be “evaluated at a later time.” He added that a trusted source system had been put in place.
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