Elon Musk’s Starlink is aiming to bring its broadband services to India by the end of December 2022. Starlink Country Director for India, Sanjay Bhargava shared, “The pre-order from India has crossed 5000 and the company is keen to work in rural areas for providing broadband services.” He further shared, “Our stretch target is to have 2,00,000 terminals active in India in December 2022. Actual numbers might be much lower than that or even 0 if we do not get government approval but it is very unlikely that we will exceed 2,00,000.
Currently, Starlink has opened pre-bookings wherein it has specified that the deposits will be of Rs. 7350 and data speeds will range between 50 to 150 megabits per second in the beta stage. Starlink aims to compete with companies like Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone in India.
Starlink claims that getting government approval in India will get easier if it gets a higher number of pre-orders from the country. Country Director said, “The government approval process is complex. So far, there is no application pending with the government, so the ball is in our court to apply for consideration which we are working on. We are optimistic that we will get approval for a pilot program or pan-India approval in the next few months.”
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Starlink targeting Rural areas
According to some latest reports, Starlink is looking to hold virtual conversations with MPs, ministers, and other government officials about how broadband can change lives in rural areas. Sanjay Bhargava said, “In October, I am also keen to have 30-minute virtual conversations with MPs, ministers, secretaries to GOI, or principal secretaries to states to see if they think 100% broadband would help improve lives. We will probably focus on ten rural Lok Sabha constituencies for 80% of the Starlink terminals shipped to India.” Moreover, he added, “Most of this will be provided by terrestrial broadband, but the hard-to-serve areas will be handled by Satcom providers like Starlink. We look forward to the day a rural constituency in India can declare itself to be 100% broadband.”
