Saurabh Sinha/TNNNEW DELHI: Elon Musk’s diatribe over Starlink’s entry into India has now become a full blown political battle. On Sunday, chairman of the standing committee on communications and IT Nishikant Dubey said this panel has “understood the challenges facing the country’s security agencies through Elon Musk’s Starlink. The defence and home ministries, and our investigation agencies are being affected by the dangerous games of these threats.”Last week, govt has pointed out that all the three satellite communication (satcom) service licence holders — Sunil Bharti Mittal-backed Eutelsat OneWeb, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio and Starlink — are at the same stage and will need to individually get security clearances and meet other regulatory requirements.“In 2013-14, the government of Manmohan Singh ji had informed TRAI about these threats. First, provide connections to the poor in your own country, America, at affordable rates, and then level accusations. India is a healthy democratic, sovereign nation. It does not change its security policy under pressure or social media. If our policy were driven by money, we would have rolled out the red carpet welcome for you despite opposition from the security agencies.”The senior BJP leader’s said on X in response to a X post by Musk that said: “The ridiculous arguments by Ambani’s army of Internet shills make no sense. On the one hand, they say Starlink couldn’t possibly compete with the amazing low prices offered by Ambani’s de facto monopoly in India and then, in the same breath, they essentially claim that Starlink would be too strong of a competitor! This is absurd hypocrisy and hyperbole.”“The reality is that competition would greatly benefit the average citizen in India by giving them more choices, as it always does. Ambani’s profits will be lower, but he is not going out of business. And, obviously, if Starlink is too expensive in India, no one will buy it, so SpaceX will need to make pricing affordable,” Musk’s post had said.Mittal-backed Eutelsat OneWeb manages a fleet of more than 630 low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Jio is working on a proposed constellation of around 1,600 LEO satellites and plans to establish 23 ground stations across India. Starlink has about 11,100 LEO satellites in orbit.LEO satellite internet operates between 300 and 2,000 km above earth. Starlink has them at about 550 km; Eutelsat OneWeb at about 1,200 km and Jim plans them at about 650 km. Amazon Kuiper, which also plans to get a satcom licence in India, has satellites at about 630 km.
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Given strained India-US ties over multiple issues like the stuck trade deal, threat of tariffs over buying Russian oil and most importantly security concerns over Starlink, people in the know say Mittal-backed Eutelsat OneWeb and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio are likely to get the nod before Musk, whose wait could be much longer.
