Starlink, Elon Musk’s ambitious project looking to beam internet from the Space, had hit a roadblock when the India Telecom ministry came down hard at it last month, said that the company has no right to sell broadband connections in the country.
In response, the Tesla-Backed company has stated that it aims to apply for the requisite licences to sell satellite-based internet commercially in India.
In his latest post on LinkedIn, Starlink’s India director Sanjay Bhargava has stated that if everything goes as per the plan, the company aims to apply for the mandatory approvals on or before January 31, 2022
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His post says, “We hope to have applied for a commercial licence on or before 31st January 2022 (unless we hit some major roadblock). We felt it would be useful to prepare two guides that help in thinking about and planning for Starlink - one for Individuals and Private Sector and one for State And Union Territories.”
The quick guide that he has shared says that the company has applied for the trial licences. If it is able to acquire the permissions needed to operate in India by April 2022, the company aims to have over 200,000 terminals by the end of 2022.
In an earlier post, Bhargava had stated that the company has over 5000 pre-order from users in India. The company was charging $99 to apply for the connection – however, this amount was to be adjusted against the monthly fee if the services would get activated.
Though after the orders from DoT, the company has stopped accepting new pre-order applications for connections as it cannot offer internet connections in the country without acquiring a licence for the same. For the users who have already applied for a beta connection, the company says that it does not have a clear timeline for when they will receive their Starlink kit.
Starlink will use Low Earth Orbiting satellites to beam internet from Space to the remote areas where setting up a wired internet connection is not feasible – economically or practically. Apart from Starlink, Bharti Global-backed OneWeb and Project Kuiper by Amazon are competing to beam high-speed wireless internet connectivity from outer Space.
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