Eutelsat OneWeb much ahead of Starlink in licence queue: Sunil Mittal

New Delhi: Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Mittal Wednesday said his satellite communication venture Eutelsat OneWeb is significantly ahead of Elon Musk's Starlink in the queue for a licence in India, having applied for it five years ago.

Mittal underlined that he will be "happy" to get the licence even a few days prior to Starlink, being already ready with the network.

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Bharti Group, with a 17.88% stake, is the second largest shareholder in Eutelsat OneWeb after the French government. The low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator, which competes with Starlink, was the first to seek Indian government approval for starting its services.

"We are awaiting our approvals," Mittal said, speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2026. "I believe we are significantly ahead of him (Elon Musk) in the queue because we applied five years ago. Our ground networks have been ready for the past three years, and our satellites have been hovering over India for the past five years."

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Mittal was responding to a question on Musk's recent salvo at Indian telecom billionaires amid a delay in granting licences to Starlink and other satellite communication services providers. Musk alleged on X that Starlink was being blocked by certain oligarchs keen to keep a "monopolistic chokehold" on India. The government has termed the allegations as "baseless and misconceived."

Others including Jeff Bezos' Amazon Leo, and Reliance Jio's joint venture with Luxembourg-based SES also haven't been able to start commercial services in the Indian market, mainly in the absence of security clearances and spectrum allocation.

"Satellite communications are still a work in progress in India," said Mittal. "We are at an advanced stage, awaiting some final security clearances. Once those approvals come through, we will be able to connect every square inch of the country."

Mittal said he plans to expand his telecom and digital services business in other global markets. In India, his focus is now increasingly turning towards data centres.

"We are looking to scale capacity from approximately 300 megawatts to one gigawatt in the shortest possible time frame," he said, detailing Bharti group's data centre ambition.

Sovereign cloud is another area of focus for the top Bharti official.