India moves toward its own LEO constellation

India is on track to get its first homegrown low-Earth orbit satellite constellation, after space regulator IN-SPACe cleared Reliance Jio’s proposal to deploy about 1,600 satellites as “technically sound,” according to government officials aware of the matter. The evaluation, conducted jointly with ISRO and the Wireless Planning and Coordination wing of the Department of Telecommunications, opens the door for the government to back Jio’s push for international orbital slots, a step that could end India’s reliance on foreign satellite operators for space-based broadband.

For India’s skies, the approval effectively fires the starting gun on a contest between the country’s richest man and the world’s richest man. Jio’s proposed constellation would offer 4.5–5 terabits per second (Tbps) of throughput over India, well above the 600 gigabits per second (Gbps) approved for Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the global LEO market with more than 10,000 satellites in orbit. Amazon’s Leo project, targeting 3 Tbps, has yet to secure IN-SPACe authorisation. Officials said the capacity Jio has proposed “is the highest so far for India.”

Unlike Starlink and Amazon Leo, which would serve India from constellations built and controlled abroad, Jio’s network would be India’s own, a distinction regulators have flagged as central to the clearance. IN-SPACe’s assessment is said to have highlighted the constellation’s value in meeting strategic defence requirements and reducing dependence on overseas companies, and early government discussions have explored hosting defence payloads on some of the satellites, a role no foreign-owned constellation in India could fill.

Beyond the geopolitics, the plan is aimed squarely at closing India’s connectivity gaps. Jio has proposed fixed satellite services, broadband and cellular backhaul, alongside direct-to-device mobile satellite services, backed by a planned network of 20–22 ground stations across the country. That combination could extend reliable broadband to remote and rural areas beyond the reach of fibre or mobile towers, and give ordinary phones satellite connectivity without extra hardware, echoing services already rolled out by Starlink and Apple elsewhere. The constellation’s architecture has also reportedly been designed to coexist with future Indian satellite systems, so it need not be the country’s only domestic constellation.

CT Bureau