Telesat-Nelco may offer Satcom services by 2024

Canada's Telesat and Nelco, a Tata group company, are likely to jointly kickstart commercial satellite communications (satcom) services by 2024 with a focus on offering affordable tariff to attract business-to-business (B2B) customers in a developing market that would have Elon Musk's SpaceX and Bharti Group-backed OneWeb as rivals.

Speaking to ET, Nelco chief executive PJ Nath backed the likes of Sunil Mittal, chairman of OneWeb, in saying satellite spectrum has never been auctioned worldwide.

"We need to move towards administrative allocation. In terms of our operations, we will not be up against telecom operators as we will not be offering mobile and telephone services," the executive added.


Spectrum allocation is a contentious issue with satcom players seeking administrative allocation of airwaves such as the millimetre band spectrum while mobile phone operators want such bandwidth to be auctioned. They argue that allotting such airwaves to satcom players would be akin to giving them a backdoor entry to provide similar services as telcos, but without the attached license conditions.