Win for Musk’s Starlink as India says no to spectrum auction pitch

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October 16, 2024 (Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s Starlink Inc. has logged a win in the fight for India’s satellite broadband market with a government minister saying the spectrum will be allocated, and not auctioned as sought by homegrown billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal.

Airwaves for this use have been administratively allocated across the world and India will align with that trend, India’s telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told reporters on Tuesday. But satellite broadband spectrum cannot be given free and the local regulator will oversee the pricing of this resource, he said.

While Scindia sought to allay concerns around newcomers such as Starlink getting spectrum cheaply, the battle of billionaires is intensifying.

The local wireless operators are resisting giving away the satellite broadband airwaves at a pre-decided price by the government, saying it creates an uneven playing field since they had to compete in an auction to get spectrum for their terrestrial wireless phone networks.

Losing Subscribers

A spectrum allocation at a government decided price will allow foreign firms such as Starlink to offer voice and data services. This constitutes a business threat for Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. and Bharti Airtel Ltd. as Starlink may chip away some of their massive subscriber base at a time when phone data use is rapidly surging.

Reliance Jio and Bharti are India’s largest and second-largest operators respectively.

The Narendra Modi-led government faces the task of luring foreign investment especially from heavyweights like Musk and balancing it with the demands placed by local wireless firms led by Ambani and Mittal. For now, the scales seem to be tipping in Starlink’s favor. Musk thanked India in an Oct. 16 post on X.

“For sure, our mandate is to go with administrative pricing,” Anil Kumar Lahoti, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said, adding that the sector regulator has a public consultation that’s underway on this issue. “Once it’s completed, we’ll take the industry’s input.”

The government stance came days after Reliance Jio’s pitch for the auction route – a demand that would have make it costlier for Starlink to roll out services in the world’s most-populous nation. Starlink is still awaiting nod for the government to start operating in the country.

Reliance Jio sought “a fair and transparent auction system for satellite services” to ensure there was a level playing field between satellite and terrestrial mobile service providers in an Oct. 10 letter to India’s telecom ministry that was seen by Bloomberg News.

The carrier called for “same service, same rules” and competitive auction pricing for the satellite broadband spectrum, according to the letter.

A representative for Reliance Jio declined to comment on the letter. Ambani’s carrier may consider legal options as the last resort, local publication Mint said in a report Wednesday.

‘Like Everybody Else’

A day earlier, Mittal had also batted in favor of auctions, saying satellite broadband providers should secure the spectrum in India in the same manner as the incumbent telecom operators did.

“Satellite companies which have ambitions to come into urban areas serving elite retail customers just need to take the telecom licenses like everybody else,” he said at an industry event in New Delhi.

Musk, in an Oct. 14 post on X, called this demand “unprecedented” without specifying any names.

While both Ambani, Asia’s richest man, Mittal-backed Eutelsat OneWeb are vying for a piece of the satellite broadband segment in India, they are also in damage control mode. They are seeking to protect the subscriber base of their telecom giants from new players potentially getting airwaves cheaper for providing a similar service.

“They need to buy the spectrum as the telecom companies buy,” Mittal; said on Tuesday. “They need to pay the license fees and also secure the networks like telecom companies do.”