Jio vs Starlink makes for a billionaire clash, but India’s satcom race is a minefield in the skies

As Jio Platforms courts a promising IPO amid Reliance Group's plan to launch a satellite venture, it's heartening to see Mukesh Ambani welcome foreign competition from the likes of Elon Musk's Starlink, making for a nice headline-grabbing clash of billionaires. But the game has not even begun.

On paper, both Jio and telecom rival Bharti Airtel have interesting plans largely still in the works. Reliance Jio plans to deploy a sovereign low-Earth-orbit (LEO) network of about 1,600 satellites and 23 Earth stations in India to connect 6 lakh villages, besides remote islands. The venture is estimated to cost $10-15 bn.

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Bharti, through its investor status in Eutelsat OneWeb and JV with Hughes Communications, plans to take on Jio with a 635-LEO satellite network, and also has a corporate partnership with Musk's SpaceX, Starlink's parent.

As regulators grapple over what to do, Musk's recent tweets on X have triggered a new storm, especially in the double backdrop of Jio Platforms' IPO and lingering worries on a 'forever-expected' US-India trade deal. Marco Rubio's India visit, that included a high-visibility engagement at Reliance's Jamnagar refinery, only sends a subtle signal: Ambani can engage the Trump regime at least as much as Musk can.

But a bit of financial flashback beyond the optics helps. India's original commercial space venture, Isro-owned Antrix Corp, is bleeding from a messy corporate divorce with Devas Multimedia, which has featured an ugly mix of allegations of political corruption, faulty regulation and legal obligations after CBI and ED formally launched criminal and financial investigations into the JV in 2015.

Though Indian courts have upheld fraud in Antrix, in August 2025, Devas and its foreign investors won $1.2 bn in an arbitral award, with an interest burden of $2 bn. The case is not yet over.

Going further back, in 1999, there was much publicity of Iridium, an ambitious US satellite venture with a catchy slogan, 'Geography is history'. Those became famous last words since Iridium itself became history - as did, for all practical purposes, its parent Motorola, since then reduced from a global telecom star to a handset brand owned by China's Lenovo since 2014.

Iridium, which was betting on LEO satellites, went bankrupt. It's now being reincarnated in a second-generation constellation acquired this June by Long Beach, California-headquartered Rocket Lab in a $8 bn deal. Rocket Lab plans to take on SpaceX in a new twist to the old tale of failure.

SpaceX raised about $86 bn in the world's largest IPO this June. But it's sitting on an estimated long-term debt burden of $29 bn, of which $25 bn came from a recent issue of bonds. For the record, Jio's current debt burden is just over $1 bn. Unless it has an ace up its sleeve, it would incur a fresh debt burden.

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All these past ventures and adventures should provide enough caveats for entrepreneurs and policymakers. Starlink charges $50-120 (~₹4,700-11,000) a month for home users, amounts Indian homes are unlikely to pay, with additional hardware costs.

Where does all that leave security hawks, policymakers, Trai and banks that may be wooed to fund satcom? We don't know. But we must know that there is a minefield in the skies.

The writer is an independent journalist.