Frenemies in orbit: Inside India’s two-front satcom war

India’s satellite communications industry is waging two contests at once, and the same handful of players keep switching trenches depending on which one is underway. On one front is the long-running battle over how satellite spectrum should be priced and for how long it should be assigned. On the other, newer front is a contest over how the satcom business itself should be structured, whether satellite operators should be confined to a wholesale “network” layer while telcos handle retail, or whether satcom should stand on its own as a full-fledged service. Reliance Jio and Amazon’s Leo constellation (the newly rebranded successor to Project Kuiper) remain the two most visible antagonists, but Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb, Tata Communications and industry body Broadband India Forum (BIF) are all active combatants, and not always on the side you’d expect.

Front one: The spectrum price contest
The first and older battle is over money and duration. Jio has been the most consistent critic of administrative, long-term satellite spectrum allocation, arguing that LEO broadband will compete directly with terrestrial mobile networks in cities and enterprise campuses. It has invoked Supreme Court precedent treating spectrum as a public resource to push for auctions or, failing that, short validity periods with mandatory reassessment every three to five years.

Global satellite operators see it differently. Amazon Leo, Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb have pushed for administratively priced spectrum assigned for roughly 20 years, arguing that satellite spectrum is coordinated internationally rather than exclusively licensed the way terrestrial airwaves are, and that auctions would make LEO constellations commercially unviable in India. The Telecommunications Act, 2023 already leans their way, allowing satellite spectrum to be assigned administratively for a fee rather than auctioned.

Bharti Airtel complicates the telco-versus-satellite framing that Jio has tried to build. As an investor in Eutelsat OneWeb, Airtel has at various points backed administrative allocation alongside the satellite bloc, even as its executives have also pressed for competitive, bid-based elements and raised security concerns about satellite services operating under lighter obligations than terrestrial networks. Vodafone Idea, financially stretched and without a satellite arm of its own, has stayed closer to the sidelines on pricing, generally echoing calls for a level playing field without leading the charge.

Front two: The layers truce
The second, more recent contest is structural rather than financial: should satellite operators be treated purely as infrastructure providers, a wholesale “network” layer, who then partner with telecom operators to reach subscribers, or should satcom be recognised as its own standalone service? TRAI put a version of this question to the industry in its April 2026 consultation on a Satellite Communication Network (SCN) authorisation, and the responses have scrambled the old battle lines.

At a TRAI open house this past week, satellite players including Amazon Leo, alongside telecom operators Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, and enterprise communications provider Tata Communications, broadly agreed with the regulator’s proposal to split the market into a network-provider layer and a service-operator layer. For the satellite side, the appeal is a cleaner “network-as-a-service” model: satellite operators focus on wholesale capacity while retail obligations, customer acquisition, billing, compliance, sit with telecom partners.

Jio, notably, objected, calling a dual-layer framework unnecessary and arguing that existing rules for satellite gateways and virtual network operators already cover the ground. Having announced plans to launch its own fleet of satellites, Jio may have less appetite for a structure that formalises satellite operators as a separate, protected category. Broadband India Forum objected from a different angle entirely, arguing that treating satcom purely as an infrastructure layer contradicts the Telecommunications Act, 2023, which it says explicitly categorises satellite communications as a distinct service rather than mere wholesale plumbing.

This isn’t the industry’s first attempt at resolving the layers question. TRAI had earlier floated a unified framework covering both network and service layers together, but the Department of Telecommunications rejected that approach in January 2025, warning it would create business inefficiencies. The current split-layer proposal is TRAI’s second attempt, and this time it has won broader, if not universal, support.

Same war, different trenches
The two contests reveal how fluid the alliances really are. Jio is a consistent hawk on spectrum pricing and duration, wanting auctions or short leashes, but it is equally consistent in resisting new regulatory structures, like the layers model, that would carve out formal protections for satellite operators as a class. Airtel, by contrast, leans toward the satellite bloc on both administrative pricing and the layers truce, a function of its OneWeb stake giving it one foot in each camp, even as it occasionally borrows Jio’s language on security and fair competition. Vodafone Idea has been quieter on pricing but signed on to the layers truce, perhaps calculating that a clean wholesale-retail split gives a cash-strapped operator a lower-cost way to offer satellite-linked services without building its own constellation.

The satellite bloc, Amazon Leo, Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb, has been the most consistent actor across both fronts, favouring long-duration, administratively priced spectrum and a layered structure that offers regulatory predictability for capital-intensive constellations. BIF stands apart from both camps: its objection to the layers proposal is rooted in a legal and classification argument, not the telco-versus-satellite rivalry, making it something of a wild card in the debate.

The regulatory backdrop
Both contests sit downstream of the same law. The Telecommunications Act, 2023 already tilts the scale toward administrative allocation for satellite spectrum, breaking from the auction-based regime that governs mobile airwaves. TRAI is now working through the harder mechanics on the pricing front, fee structures, validity periods, rollout and security conditions, while simultaneously trying to settle the structural question of who counts as a network provider versus a service operator. The Department of Telecommunications must eventually reconcile both sets of recommendations with intense, ongoing lobbying from every direction, knowing that whichever way it leans on either question, the losing side has signalled it may pursue a legal challenge.

What’s at stake
Together, the spectrum-pricing contest and the layers contest will shape the economics of India’s nascent broadband-from-space market, determining whether domestic telcos, global LEO constellations, or some negotiated hybrid of the two set the pace in high-throughput connectivity. For policymakers, the challenge lies in balancing revenue and competition concerns against India’s ambition to become a major satcom hub, while avoiding regulatory uncertainty that could delay commercial satellite broadband launches. With TRAI’s recommendations still in flux on both fronts and strong lobbying from every side, the final framework could define not just how Jio and Amazon Leo compete in India, but also how satellite and terrestrial networks coexist, and occasionally cooperate, across urban and rural markets.

CT Bureau