Centre to safeguard national interests as global Satcom players seek entry

With satcom services set to be mainstreamed soon, the government is prioritizing national safeguards in light of the expected overseas dominance of firms such as Elon Musk-owned Starlink, Jeff Bezos-led Amazon Kuiper, and Eutelsat OneWeb.

Officials aware of the details told ET among the measures that will be taken include setting up a satcom monitoring facility with an outlay of over Rs 900 crore to track satellites (Indian and foreign) over Indian skies, reserving orbital and spectrum resources for upcoming Indian satellites, especially NGSO (non- geostationary), and having a favourable ecosystem to set up gateways in India, that will serve local and global operations.

“Some of the measures are likely to be announced through the new Telecom Policy, which will create a roadmap for the next five years or by 2030,” said one of the officials.

A second official said that the Digital Communications Commission (DCC), which is an inter-ministerial panel and the highest decision-making body of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has already cleared the proposal for setting up the satellite monitoring facility with an outlay of around Rs 930 crore.

The facility, once operational, will monitor both local and foreign satellites over Indian skies and satellite-based communication services in the country.

“Apart from monitoring, the facility would be helpful for mitigating interference from adjacent satellites in the Indian sky and there would be better coordination,” the official said.

Currently, the Indian participation is minimal in the satcom market, particularly in the low-earth orbit (LEO), which is increasingly becoming lucrative from a communications point of view.

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Starlink is the dominant player with around 7000 satellites already in orbit. Amazon Kuiper, too, is going to have more than 3,000 satellites, while Eutelsat OneWeb has more than 600 satellites in the sky. The Bharti Group is the largest stakeholder in Eutelsat OneWeb, but its capacity is far lower than Starlink and what Kuiper can offer in the coming years.

There is no India LEO satellite operator as of now, but the situation may change in future and that is why the government does not want Indian entities to be on the backfoot when they consider entering in the coming years, towards which resources would be reserved for them, officials said.

“Already there are many startups in the satcom space, and the government wants India to emerge as a major player in the satellite market. The regulatory framework will be streamlined and simplified to unlock the potential of the satellite market,” said the second official.

The preliminary draft of the new telecom policy calls for establishing an effective regulatory framework to safeguard the country’s interests and sovereign rights to keep optimal orbital and spectrum resources for upcoming Indian satellites, especially NGSO.

Also, there would be an enabling framework for provisioning ground stations as a service (GSaaS) from India on a global level. India can act as a hub of gateways for serving countries.

Setting up satellite earth station gateways for NGSO systems is a capital-intensive exercise and also very complex in nature consisting of multiple antennas. The NGSO operators, therefore, want to establish an optimum number of gateways to serve various jurisdictions across the globe. Satcom firms can set up gateways in a particular country and serve a large area around it covering multiple countries.

“The law enforcement agencies can take a call which countries can be allowed to be served from Indian gateways,” said the second official.

India’s space economy is reckoned to have a potential to touch $44 billion by 2033, boosting its global share to 8% from 2% currently, as per IN-SPACe.

The commercial launch of satcom services is slated to commence in the coming months once DoT allocates spectrum to companies. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has already recommended the administrative allocation of satcom spectrum for a fee pegged at 4% of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) to be assigned for five years.