Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband by satellite system has received a ‘Letter of Intent’ from India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The official message covers Starlink’s satellite communications services. However, there are many tough limitations being set which might make a deployment a challenge.
The move comes after months of regulatory scrutiny by the DoT, which is insisting that satellite-based service providers must meet compliance standards before offering their services in India. With the release of new security guidelines for global mobile personal communications by satellite license holders, India is seen to have taken a major step towards enabling a new generation of satellite internet services. Local sources say that the approvals for Starlink are now in the final stages.
The 29-point directive by the DoT outlines clear conditions for lawful interception, data localization, infrastructure deployment and user tracking, setting the stage for Starlink’s long-anticipated entry into the India market. The directive mandates that all Indian user data must be routed through gateways located within India, with critical infrastructure like network control centers and monitoring systems.
Guidelines also require that Indian users not be connected via foreign gateways or servers, and impose strict limits on traffic routing, remote access and data visibility from outside the country. A long-term indigenization clause mandates that at least 20 per cent of Starlink’s ground segment must be sourced or built in India within five years. The updated framework comes amid increasing public interest in Starlink’s plans for India.
These challenges mean that Starlink cannot carry out on-board processing (and inter-satellite laser links) and India seems to be insisting that there can be no connection to other states, besides India. Given the complexity of south Asia and Starlink’s coverage over wide geographic regions and where uplink and onward downlinking could easily be into a non-Indian country, meeting this obligation could be difficult.
India’s Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia had said recently that Starlink’s license application was under review and a decision would follow once it ticked all the boxes in terms of regulatory and security compliances.
The DoT has already issued licenses to Eutelsat/Bharti’s OneWeb and the Reliance Jio Satellite Communications businesses for their services to start once frequencies are allocated.
