Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper are advocating for lower satellite spectrum prices in India, with Kuiper warning that high costs could force them to shift their focus to urban consumers, instead of the original goal of providing connectivity to remote areas where building terrestrial infrastructure, like phone towers, is challenging.
This shift would also bring them into direct competition with major domestic telecom players, including Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Starlink recently argued that satellite spectrum is a shared resource and should not be auctioned, a stance that directly opposes the views of Mukesh Ambani, who owns Jio, India’s largest telecom provider, and Sunil Mittal, head of Airtel.
Mittal, however, has called for spectrum auctions in all areas except remote regions. Currently, OneWeb and Jio-SES are the only entities in India with the necessary approvals and permits to offer satellite communication services, while Starlink and Kuiper’s applications, along with others, remain pending.
