After Cut-Throat Ground Battle, Telecoms Prepare For Space War

But notwithstanding his número uno status on the Forbes ‘World’s Richest’ list, Elon Musk has time and again been given the classic Indian snub.

It happened with Musk’s futuristic but expensive and infrastructure-hungry Tesla electric vehicles, and was repeated when his Twitter buyout (now ‘X’) only managed to get social media users to thumb down their noses.

But a tenacious Musk is back, this time with his Starlink satellite Internet. He is being noticed too, as he promises connectivity to India’s underserved millions, all without using dedicated hardware or government licenses. Because this time, he needs neither.

At the epicentre of this telecom earthquake-in-the-making lies spectrum, precious airwaves whose sale and purchase have changed India’s telecom landscape many times. Spectrum has cost the telecom rivals billions of dollars, and seen some of the globe’s biggest companies exit India.

Musk Insists Sat-Spectrum Should Be Free

The spectre of Musk's satellite spectrum sale has led to a verbal pandemic, with Musk recently firing a salvo to remind the Indian government that globally, satellite spectrum has never been charged. “That would be unprecedented, as this spectrum has been designated by ITU (International Telecommunications Union) as shared satellite spectrum,” Musk said.

Reverberations of Musk’s statement clearly reached the intended ears, for Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia seconded the sentiment at the recent India Mobile Congress. “For satcom, spectrum will be allocated administratively. That does not mean it comes without cost; the cost will be decided by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India),” Scindia said.

In effect, India has laid to rest the debate on this matter by deciding to administratively allocate spectrum for satellite communications, as laid down in the Telecommunications Act, 2023.

Administrative Allocation Of Spectrum To Hit Jio, Airtel

It is a recipe for a policy-challenging war in the telecom space. As expected, Mukesh Ambani’s Jio and Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel are hunting for matchboxes to light the fuse.

Jio has always advocated the auction of satellite spectrum — which is the international norm — and challenged the likes of Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper.

Jio recently shot off a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), challenging the option of administrative allocation of satellite spectrum and maintaining its demand for auction.

Mittal, chairperson of Bharti and majority stakeholder in satcom firm OneWeb, insisted that anyone offering retail satellite services in urban areas should buy spectrum and be bound by license conditions similar to those governing telecoms.

In the midst of this wrangling over policy, BSNL and Viasat dropped a bomb on the telecom applecart with claims that they had successfully trialled direct-to-device satellite services, the first such pilot in India. They say they managed to get common devices to connect to satellite networks — for two-way and SoS messaging — on commercial Android phones, without dedicated hardware.

Satellite Services Could Storm The Data Bastion

If allowed by the government, satcom would vastly expand data connectivity through satellite services for consumers and businesses. From the business perspective of Jio, Airtel (and Vodafone-Idea), this would ring a death-knell to the last bastion for their revenues and profitability — data services.

Rewind the telecom story by a decade, and Jio Infocomm had killed the biggest revenue stream for telecoms — voice services — by offering it free to customers for life.

The few stubborn operators who had dug in their heels writhed for a bit, but soon moaned and groaned their way into telecom’s history books. That was Mukesh Ambani’s (re)entry into the Indian telecom business.

Musk is on a similar mission, the difference being that he is eyeing a data dole-out. For years, he has battled India’s regulatory corridors and now comes armed with Starlink and the ITU precedent of free satellite spectrum allocation. In the satcom space, ITU is sacrosanct, backed by the United Nations. That emboldens Musk and Starlink even more.

Administratively-allocated airwaves, not auction-purchased, would enable Starlink to expand into the largest untapped market in India — satellite broadband services.

Additionally, diluted Indian licensing norms (and levies, in sat-services) would empower the world’s richest man to finally fulfil a lifelong goal, that of making a business conquest in India. And Musk has the desire, gumption and deep pockets to pull this off.

Lines Drawn For A Telecom Battle Royale

This is a battle between two of the world’s richest men. One has proven his point and is enjoying the afterglow, the other has a point to prove.

The turf is also different in this war, as it is unreasonable for any country to auction satellite spectrum, given its very nature. Unlike terrestrial spectrum used in mobile communications, satellite spectrum has no national territorial limits, making it international in character. It is this borderless nature of the resource that makes the UN its custodian.

In the Telecommunications Act 2023, satellite communication spectrum is in a list marked as 'For Administrative Allocation'. The only caveat is that DoT has asked TRAI to ‘discover’ a methodology to assign the spectrum administratively, in the absence of the auction process.

Against this, in letters to TRAI and DoT, Jio has made a case for auctions in this case, arguing that administrative allocation won't ensure a level-playing field for satellite and terrestrial services. “Stakeholders will not be able to provide relevant inputs, undermining the fairness of recommendations and the intent to promote balanced competition,” Jio said.

In return, Musk has stuck with his “unprecedented” and “designated by the ITU as shared spectrum for satellites” contentions.

Someone Has A Very Difficult Decision To Make

Nearly 10 crore people in India lack basic internet access, because they reside in that quarter of the country which is un(der)served due to geographical and business bottomline constraints. For this India, and for those Indians, connectivity through satellites is the only viable solution.

India, however, is also a country where the few surviving operators have pumped in Rs 10 lakh crore in spectrum and infrastructure to make telecom happen. Their existence is critical too.

Finally, telecoms pay licence and other fees to the government under various heads, including their annual spectrum purchase outstandings, which in itself is quite a tidy sum for the government's coffers.

That gets us to the reluctant wizard in this new-age space war — the government. This is going to be a very tough call for someone in governance to make. While on the one hand, whichever way they turn, customers are going to benefit, it is also true that whatever hand is called out, people will feel the pain of being trumped. 

(The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. Views expressed are personal)