BigTech

Inside Starlink and Amazon's battle plans for India's internet market

Pratap Vikram Singh

January 28, 2025 | 10 Min Read

As India prepares rules for satellite broadband, domestic telcos are mounting fierce resistance against Starlink and Project Kuiper's entry. While their fears of market disruption may be overblown in the short term, the long-term threats loom large. For subscribers, though, it’s all gravy.

Key Takeaways

India's telcos are fighting Starlink and Project Kuiper's entry, with one Reliance Jio presentation to Jyotiraditya Scindia drawing the telecom minister’s ire over unsubstantiated claims
While satellite internet poses limited short-term threat to telcos, in the long term, Starlink and Project Kuiper could disrupt them significantly
Both foreign players are especially incentivised to craft strategies for the price-sensitive Indian market as growth will plateau in more developed markets in the coming years
Though they will initially target enterprise customers, the two companies will eventually lower tariffs to go after consumers as well

On December 9, at the fag end of a stakeholder advisory committee meeting chaired by India’s telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, a representative from Reliance Jio made a presentation on behalf of telcos aimed at addressing key issues facing the telecom sector.

According to one source aware of the matter, things reached a boiling point when the presentation touched on what the mammoth satellite constellations of Elon Musk-owned Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper would mean for the telcos.

The presentation, reviewed by The CapTable, made several unsubstantiated claims on how these low-orbit satellite constellations could lead to the over-consumption of spectrum, stating there was a need for capping how much spectrum they could use. In reality, this isn’t the case as satellite spectrum is shared by multiple service providers and the use of spectrum by one company doesn’t limit the capacity of others.

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