Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal had recently said OneWeb was ready to launch nationally by end-November if it received the spectrum. Jio’s president Mathew Oommen too had said the company, in partnership with its Luxembourg-based JV partner SES, could roll out its satellite-based JioSpaceFiber broadband services within weeks of being allotted the airwaves.
Bharti Group-backed OneWeb, Reliance Jio, and Elon Musk s Starlink could potentially launch satellite broadband services in India sooner than anticipated, as the Telecommunications Bill 2023 supports the non-auctions route for satellite spectrum allocation. Industry executives suggest that with the bill s approval, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) can directly manage satellite spectrum allocations, expediting the process compared to potential delays through auctions.
Satellite Internet: To be sure, a GMPCS licence already allows mobility services. But the authorisation for such services was held back by DoT when it gave letters of intent (LoI) to OneWeb and Jio Satellite. “The LoIs issued to OneWeb and Jio are for fixed satellite services,” a second official said.
The move to grant mobility services authorisation to Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite Services (GMPCS) licence holders will potentially pave the way for companies such as Elon Musk-owned Starlink - which has applied for the licence - to compete with mobile service providers, experts said. An inter-ministerial panel involving the ministries of defence and home affairs, departments of telecommunications and space, and the cabinet secretariat will decide on the matter after security clearance, officials aware of the details told ET.
In what’s quickly becoming a virtual world, students with no or slow internet are being left behind. So, school administrators in rural Wise County reached