India Satcom Symposium 2024: The broadband communications segment continues to grow in India and we will look at where satellite connectivity can be harnessed for a variety of use cases relevant to our country. The space broadband demand for various applications, whether it is navigation or defense or internal security, coastal surveillance and others, Karandikar said.
After mobility, broadband-from-space services could be the next big battlefield between entities led by billionaire industrialists Mukesh Ambani who owns Jio Satellite and Sunil Mittal, whose Bharti Enterprises owns a majority stake in OneWeb. They will be pushed by the likes of Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, all of whom are trying to launch services quickly to get a first-mover advantage.
The satellite communications market in India is at a nascent stage but the potential is substantial, particularly in rural and remote areas. As per an EY-ISpA report, India s space economy is set to rise to $13 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 6%. "I think they (Starlink) should come. In the US, there is an opportunity for Starlink, let them come in, they need to figure out what their business model in India could be," said Oommen, referring to global competition.