Airtel announces a distribution agreement allowing it to sell SpaceX’s Starlink services in India. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Bharti Airtel Ltd. announced a distribution agreement allowing it to sell SpaceX’s Starlink services in India, a major breakthrough for the Elon Musk-owned satellite Internet firm. The agreement does not mean that services will be offered immediately and Starlink still needs to get necessary authorisations from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Ministry of Home Affairs before it can commence operations in India.
“Airtel and SpaceX will explore offering Starlink equipment in Airtel’s retail stores, Starlink services via Airtel to business customers, opportunities to connect communities, schools, and health centers, among many others, in even the most rural parts of India,” Airtel said in an announcement. It does not appear that the arrangement is exclusive, as the telco has indicated that this is merely the “first” such pact.
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Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. has long resisted the quick introduction of Starlink and similar services, which use a constellation of satellites to provide reasonably high-speed Internet to any user with a clear view of the sky. The technology has been touted as a way for providing Internet coverage in remote areas.
Firms like Starlink should be required to bid for spectrum just as terrestrial operators do, firms like Reliance Jio have argued. However, Airtel, whose parent Bharti Group has had a stake in OneWeb, has supported SpaceX’s position in the past, arguing that shared spectrum resources like the kind Starlink use should only be allocated administratively. Airtel has said that it would also offer OneWeb at a future date alongside Starlink. At a recent open house discussion organised by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, representatives for Jio and SpaceX clashed publicly on the issue.
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Starlink already has equipment on the ground in India to route Indians’ traffic through equipment where local authorities can perform inspections. However, it has neither received spectrum allocation nor a Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite authorisation from the DoT, which would allow it to start offering its services. Last month, Starlink started operations in Bhutan, the first South Asian country where it is legally operating.
Illegal Starlink terminals have been seized by authorities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and in Manipur but the company has insisted that these terminals wouldn’t function on Indian territory and officials have not publicly contradicted this position. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Mr. Musk during his working visit to Washington, DC last month but it is unclear if any commitments on expediting approvals for Starlink were made.
Published – March 11, 2025 05:48 pm IST