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.

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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