Satellite communication providers and telecom operators agree on Trai's infrastructure provider proposal

Satellite-based communication providers and telecom operators, often at loggerheads with each other, agreed on the telecom regulator's proposal to authorise communications satellite operators to act as infrastructure providers and partner with existing telecom operators to extend commercial communications services to subscribers.

At an open house discussion organised by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Thursday, satellite players such as Amazon Leo and telecom operators including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, along with enterprise communications provider Tata Communications, agreed with Trai on creating a separate layer for network providers and service operators.

Industry think tank Broadband India Forum (BIF) opposed the proposal, arguing that the emerging sector must be recognised as a standalone, independent service, rather than strictly a wholesale infrastructure layer. A BIF spokesperson said defining satcom purely as an infrastructure layer contradicts the parent Telecommunications Act of 2023, which explicitly categorises satellite communications as a distinct service.


Reliance Jio, which has announced that it will launch its own fleet of satellites, also objected to creating a dual-layer framework, calling it unnecessary as the existing frameworks for satellite gateways and virtual network operators sufficiently covers the issue.

The push to separate the network and service layers for satellite communications came after the telecom department in January 2025, rejected Trai's earlier proposal of creating a unified framework for network and service layers saying the move would create massive business inefficiencies.

In their written comments to the regulator, satcom players such as Starlink, Amazon Leo and Oneweb welcomed the move to create a separate layer saying the move would help them operate on a satellite communication network as a service model, where satellite operators focus on providing wholesale capacity, leaving the retail obligations to partners.