Reiterating its commitment to provide satellite telecom service in the country’s remote interior places, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, said his company is ready for rollout and waiting for the Centre’s greenlight.
Mittal said, “Satellite telecom in India will help the country provide much-needed services to remote interior places where conventional telecom services tend to be costly.”
“We are one of the leading players and are waiting for permissions. We are providing these services in many parts of the world already. So I think it’s a great initiative, and we have already sought our permissions to launch,” Mittal told reporters on the sidelines of SOUL Leadership Conclave here in the national capital.
“So as soon as we are given the green light, we launch our services,” the telecom leader added. “There are lots of parts of the world and lots of people still living in those dark areas which need to be lit up. The only way it can be done is through satellite broadband connectivity.”
He also responded to Elon Musk’s criticism of India’s spectrum allocation process. Musk has applied for a satellite telecom license in India and is critical of the process.
Mittal reiterated Bharti’s stance, emphasising that spectrum in rural and hard-to-reach areas should be allocated on a shared basis.
“We are very clear for all the rural, hard to get to areas, the spectrum should be given on a shared basis. It’s only in the area of urban areas. All that TRAI and DoT need to come (up) with a policy which doesn’t discriminate against the terrestrial providers,” he said.
Bharti Enterprises has argued that satellite companies should be required to pay licensing fees and acquire spectrum through auctions, just as traditional telecom operators do.
There has been a continued debate on the process of spectrum allocation – administrative allocation or through auction. Elon Musk’s Starlink and global peers like Amazon’s Project Kuiper want an administrative allocation of spectrum for satellite services.
