Starlink, Airtel and Jio: A trifecta to transform India’s digital future

The government must explicitly assist in this with funds from the Universal Service Obligation Fund, now dubbed the Digital Bharat Nidhi, to make satellite broadband connection affordable even for low-income communities in rural areas.

Ever since Jio stormed India’s wireless broadband market with initially free and later low-cost data plans, broadband usage in India has grown by leaps and bounds. But the fact remains that broadband access stays stunted at 47% of the population. 

That means over 750 million Indians do not have access to broadband. In an economy undergoing structural change, seemingly generating lots of work but not so many jobs, it is vital that people have reliable and affordable access to broadband, to be informed of work opportunities, and, in very many cases, perform the work and deliver it.

Also read | Can Musk factor, brand hype, Airtel-Jio partnerships boost Starlink’s services?

A mission to connect 250,000 panchayats (local administrations), covering the bulk of India’s 600,000 odd villages, was launched in India in 2011. It was called the National Optical Fibre Network. 

When Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, his government slammed its predecessor’s lackadaisical attitude towards implementing schemes that enrich people’s lives, and promised to complete the network in two years. It rebranded the scheme as Bharat Broadband Network, or BharatNet. But more than a decade later, Modi’s administration still has not achieved the target of providing broadband in 250,000 panchayats.

The work has progressed to laying fibre optic cable in 210,000 panchayats, but functional wi-fi routers have been set up only in 6,039 panchayats. The challenge of laying cable in remote, hilly areas is complex. It has been clear for some time that satellite broadband is the best way to connect remote areas. 

However, two obstacles stand in the way.

A past controversy

India does not have a Starlink-style network of communication satellites in low-earth orbit. India’s communication satellites, like the majority of the world’s communication satellites, are in geostationary orbits some 36,000 km above the earth. By the time a signal reaches a satellite transponder and bounces back to the ground, there is a delay, or latency. Low earth orbits are 160-2,000 km above the earth. Starlink is at an elevation of 550 km. This virtually eliminates latency.

An additional factor lending hesitancy in the adoption of satellite broadband is the controversy over an aborted satellite broadband project called Devas. The project was abandoned more than a decade ago on allegations that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government gave valuable satellite spectrum for the project by administrative arrangement rather than by auction. The current government’s policy, too, is to allocate satellite spectrum by administrative measures and not via auction.

Could the Modi government have orchestrated the alliance between US President Donald Trump’s high-profile ally Elon Musk’s Starlink and India’s telecom majors, which are pursuing their own satellite broadband ambitions? That line of thinking makes for good political fodder but makes little difference to the desirability of the alliance on the ground.

Starlink’s standard offering is not cheap. But it could offer India  special rates, just as it has in Kenya, where the monthly fee is $10, even as the rate in the US is $120. India can offer to subsidise the kit Starlink uses to uplink to the network in the sky, and for  downlink, using the unused funds of the Bharat Digital Nidhi.

Also read | Starlink’s entry into India: Fostering rivalry in the market

Is satellite broadband safe?

But how vulnerable is satellite broadband to hacking, eavesdropping, disruption  and interference? It is vulnerable. But so is the traditional broadband network, for which India relies on kits manufactured and supplied by foreign companies. While kits from China are eschewed in base stations and routers in India, the fact remains that much of the electronic equipment deployed in telecom networks are sourced from Chinese companies, and these are all potential sources of vulnerability.

Till India acquires the capability to design and manufacture all the elements of the broadband network and launch its own low-earth orbit satellites, that vulnerability will remain. It is better to live with that vulnerability and empower all Indians with access to quality broadband rather than abjure foreign satellite broadband on account of the risk it carries. That would be comparable to no longer using roads to avoid accidents.

Also read | A look at Airtel and Jio’s agreements and disagreements with Elon Musk’s Starlink

Of course, it would be preferable to not use the Starlink infrastructure for defence purposes, and to fast-track deployment of India’s own network of communication satellites for defence and keeping track of drones that are deployed for civilian and non-civilian use.

Amazon’s Kuiper network of low-earth orbit satellites is on the way. So is a Chinese communications project. OneWeb, in which Bharti Group has a stake, could expand its services to make it affordable for individual consumers. 

But there is little reason for India to wait for such competition to materialize. The sooner we get satellite broadband to provide the entire population with fast connectivity the better off we would be as a nation.