Satellite broadband services in India: Players and problems

Ernst & Young (EY) estimates that India's annual satellite services market would be $1 billion in the near term, and will grow to about $5 billion by 2025. The opportunity is significant, considering we still have vast, predominantly rural spaces not covered yet by fibre to the home (FTTH) or by mobile companies. A new generation of satellites promises to make issues of the past like low speed and high latency a memory.

From an industry point of view, myriad opportunities present themselves. Central and state governments need communication networks for their social, economic, military and police programmes, and campaigns, especially in the hinterland. Airline passengers want hi-speed connectivity in the air so that their productivity isn't compromised. Cruise and cargo ships need maritime connectivity on the high seas to remain informed, connected and safe.

Energy companies need hi-speed connectivity for real-time analytics to track equipment performance, to preempt outages and for rapid remediation. Oil drilling companies and mines that have connectivity challenges in difficult terrain will benefit. Telcos need augmented geographical reach, bandwidth allocation capabilities and carrier-grade quality. Broadcasters, platform operators and social media need hi-quality services to deliver multi-device viewing and streaming experiences.

On May 13, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg base in California, its 12th launch this year. SpaceX's constellation plan envisages 12,000 satellites, of which about 2,500 have been launched, and they have applied for permission to launch 30,000 more. These low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites connect to endpoints via flat, pizza box-sized user-terminals that can be mounted anywhere.

The Federal Communications Commission, the US regulator, has awarded Starlink $900 million in subsidies to support rural broadband in 35 US states. In India, Starlink had a bad start. 5,000 pre-orders were obtained in just a few months, before GoI halted them in October 2021, ordering them to get regulatory approvals before offering services.

In March 2020, Bharti's OneWeb and its affiliates like Qualcomm, Airbus and Virgin, filed for bankruptcy. Bharti Global and British government then invested $500 million each, to take over OneWeb in July that year. Additional funding from SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems followed in January 2021. Eutelsat, the French satcom operator, then invested $550 million to take the investment closer to $2 billion.

The first six of their constellation of 648 satellites was launched in February 2019. 428 satellites have now been launched, with the rest planned in 2022. They have also inked a deal with NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL), the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), for satellite launches recently. Phase 2 envisages 6,372 satellites.

A Hughes-Bharti joint venture (JV) will offer OneWeb services in India. They aspire to get off the ground in 2022 itself to secure first-mover advantage. However, they have to contend with two issues - a recent failure of one of its satellites owing to a software glitch, and that their satellites won't de-orbit passively yet, adding to the space debris problem.

Amazon's Project Kuiper plans to launch 3,236 LEO satellites. The project, named after 20th-century Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, commenced in 2019. Two satellites will be launched this year and services will commence after 578 satellites are in orbit. This is Jeff Bezos' second space venture after Blue Origin, his space flight company.

Amazon now has more than 1,000 people on Project Kuiper and has tied up with Arianespace, Blue Origin, ABL Space Systems and United Launch Alliance as launch partners to reduce scheduling risk, and with Verizon for hi-speed satellite internet. To address the menace of space debris, their prototypes will burn up at the end of their life span.

Jio recently formed a 51:49 JV with Luxembourg's SES to deliver affordable, fast broadband, but will use geostationary and medium Earth orbit (GEO and MEO) satellite constellations. They will build extensive ground infrastructure to support the effort, targeting enterprises and cellular backhaul services, aiming to accelerate the growth of multi-gigabit broadband, alongside their continuing focus on fibre and FTTH through their other entities. SES will enable 100 Gbps connectivity. Their experience, global coverage and focus on industry verticals augurs well. As will Jio's disruptive approach that will expand the market.

Tata's Nelco has tied up with Canada's Telesat to offer broadband in India using LEO satellites. Telesat plans a 298-satellite constellation and its Lightspeed brand will be on offer in India by 2024. Their focus will also be B2B and backhaul for telecom operators in remote areas.

Others global players include Blackrock-backed Astranis, satphone specialist AST Mobile, Britain's Inmarsat and Lockheed Martin-Omnispace.

The industry expects GoI to announce the policy for providing broadband services from space shortly. Will the policy facilitate seamless working across various overseeing government departments? Will the spectrum be allocated or auctioned? Will the premium 27.5-28.5 GHz spectrum be reserved exclusively for satellite operations? And will the new services overlap too much with the infrastructure already created? We'll know soon.