Satellite internet by Elon Musk, Airtel, Tata, Amazon will disrupt broadband in India

The broadband space in India is heating up with multiple players set to launch their satellite internet services.

–Companies vying for satellite internet space-
Among those are Elon Musk-backed Starlink, Bharti Airtel-backed OneWeb, Amazon-backed Project Kuiper and British start-up Methera Global Communications.

Other players include HughesNet, Iridium, Eutelsat, Viasat, O3b Networks.

Starlink
The project seeks to provide high speed and low latency internet via satellites deployed on Falcon rockets.

Customers can reserve their place for $ 99 or Rs 7300 which includes a satellite dish, a tripod and a Wi-Fi router.

The service has recorded blistering speeds of around 80 Mbps (promised speed up to 300 Mbps) which easily overshadows the average speed of India’s 4G or fiber broadband.

Tata Initiative
Tata Group is entering the satellite internet race in India in partnership with Telesat.

The partnership has come about through Tata Group-entity Nelco which partnered with Telesat in September 2020.

Through this, it aims to offer enterprise broadband services based on Telesat’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.

Light-speed satellite services could arrive in India as soon as by 2024.

OneWeb
Bharti Group pledged to invest $500 million in satellite internet company, OneWeb.

With this investment, Bharti Group (BG) will become the largest shareholder.

Other stakeholders include the British govt, Eutelsat and SoftBank with each owning 19.3%.

-OneWeb launches another batch of satellites-
OneWeb successfully launched a batch of 34 satellites by Arianespace from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Aug 21.

This takes the total number of OneWeb’s total in-orbit constellation to 288 satellites.

A fleet of a total 648 LEO satellites would deliver high-speed, low-latency global connectivity.

-Global demand-
It remains on track to accomplish a global commercial launch in 2022.

It is also enjoying a strong demand for its connectivity services in remote regions.

The demand comes from customers, telecommunications providers, ISPs, and governments around the world.

-Local partnerships and cost cutting-
For its entry into India, OneWeb is reportedly in discussions with Sasken Technologies, ISRO’s commercial arm, NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL) and certain global tech companies.

Through this partnership, it could sharply cut down user access terminal costs before launching fast satellite broadband services in India by May 2022. Trak.in