2024-A year of satellite broadband

The year 2024 is set to be the year when satellite broadband would become commercially available in India, especially now when the government has decided to give spectrum for satellite broadband services outside of auctions.

The passage of the Telecommunications Bill, 2023 in Parliament, enabling the allocation of satellite airwaves, will expedite execution plans of key incumbents in India – Bharti Group- backed OneWeb, Reliance’s Jio Satellite Communications Ltd, and Elon Musk’s Starlink – and entry of Amazon’s Kuiper and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to enter the Indian market.

“OneWeb should launch sometime in the first half of next year,” said Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive officer of Bharti Airtel, which will distribute OneWeb’s satellite broadband services in India.

“Its two gateways in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu will be operational within the next few months and with Hughes as its distribution partner, it will be serving the market right from day one of operations,” said Shivaji Chatterjee – president and managing director, Hughes Communications Indian Private Limited, that will distribute the services in India and global markets.

Reliance’s Jio Satellite Communications’ global joint venture (JV) partner SES is preparing to send more satellites into orbit, executives said. Jio entered into a JV with SES, a Luxembourg-based satellite communications service provider, to access latest medium earth orbit (MEO) satellite technology, which can offer Gigabit, fiber-like services from space. “We’re fully ready. Our earth station in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, is operational. JioSpaceFiber is being piloted across four locations and the company plans to launch it commercially next year. Services will be launched as soon as the government allocates the spectrum,” a senior company executive said, asking not to be named.

The opportunity provided by satellite broadband is immense, even though its current applications may appear to be just to provide connectivity to the unconnected or remote areas. While SpaceX’s Starlink is yet to get approval from the Indian government, Amazon’s Kuiper is preparing to apply for the government nod, Mint had reported last month.

“Private actors have jumped into this space and LEOs (low earth orbit) are the reasons today that we’ve been using satellite for GPS in your car, in your watch when you were running, for checking weather forecast, so now we see clearly, space is for all, that’s why we believe that 2024 will be a special year for space,” said Capgemini chief innovation officer, aerospace and defence, Patrice Duboe.

Advancements in satellite technology—in the form of LEOs which are much cheaper to make, compared to geostationary satellites—and the better quality of satellites being made today compared to a decade ago, have led to a rise in commercial applications of space based communication. The lower latency of LEOs combined with better throughputs on lower power requirements have increased the scale of opportunity manifold, experts said. LiveMint