Why wait for Starlink when the rural internet gap is India’s to fix

In late 2021, Starlink's then-India head, Sanjay Bhargava, announced a 'stretch target' of having 2 lakh terminals running in the country by end-2022, most of them in villages. The company took pre-orders from some 5,000 Indians. It had no licence. DoT told it to stop and refund the money, and Bhargava left soon after.

That episode is worth recalling this week. At India Mobile Congress on Wednesday, SpaceX VP Lauren Dreyer said Starlink has built 20 gateway sites here and stands 'ready to serve India once India is ready'. Her boss was less patient. Only a few hours later, Elon Musk posted that 'certain oligarchs' were blocking the service, and called it 'a crime against the people of India'.

Also read: Elon Musk asks why Starlink still lacks India licence after ‘five years’ of compliance


The pattern has not changed since 2021: move first, and treat rules as an obstacle someone else has put in the way. There are 3 more reasons for GoI to hesitate giving Starlink the green light:

Pricing

The pitch is always the same: a Himalayan classroom, a clinic in the northeast, a fisherman checking the weather.... The reported price is ₹33k-35k for the kit, and at least ₹3k a month. Compare that with what Indians pay now. A fibre connection costs ₹500-1,500 a month, with installation at a fraction of the Starlink kit. Mobile data is about ₹10/GB. The typical household keeps its internet bill under ₹1,000. Starlink's monthly fee is 2-5x what its nearest alternatives charge, and its hardware roughly 15x.

Jefferies has said Starlink will remain a 'premium niche' in India, and that's a fair description. Likely buyers are resorts, remote worksites and companies wanting a backup line. The villager enters the story only if the state pays. Which means public money going to a foreign company to do a job BharatNet was funded to do. Servicing a faulty dish in a village with no road access is a further cost nobody has explained.

Terminals before licence

Security forces in Manipur have recovered Starlink equipment from insurgent groups. Militants near the Myanmar border reportedly used smuggled units to get around internet shutdowns during disturbances. A terminal was also found in a seizure in the Andamans.

In Bolivia, which refused Starlink a licence, kits came in from neighbouring countries, and were registered to addresses in Brazil or Chile. The company's answer is that its systems catch the mismatch and cut service after about 60 days. Two months is a long time in a conflict zone. And in every such case, the decision to switch off is taken by the company, on its own schedule.

Switch sits elsewhere

Starlink says Indian user data will stay in India, and that it has built controls for Indian security requirements. There is no reason to doubt the intent. But gateways on Indian soil don't change who owns the satellites, or who can turn a region on and off. In Ukraine, coverage over a theatre of war depended on one man's view of the matter.

Bolivia's objection was that a foreign satellite operator weakens a government's ability to enforce its own laws on its own networks. That argument can be abused by governments that simply want to censor, and, yes, Indians have reason to be wary of shutdowns, too.

But the remedy for bad shutdown policy is better law made here, by people we elect. To hand the question to a private firm headquartered abroad is hardly an improvement.

Also read: Musk pitches Starlink for India's no-internet, no-network areas a day after 'oligarchs' charge

Refusing Starlink is no defence of the present state of things. More than 11,000 villages in India lacked 4G as of May. Rural India has 48 internet subscriptions per 100 people, against 127 in the cities. BharatNet has laid over 8.5 lakh km of fibre and declared about 2.2 lakh gram panchayats service-ready. Yet, working points of presence were reported at barely 80,000. That gap is scandalous - and ours to fix.

Satellite capacity will be part of the fix in hills and islands. It should come through operators India can fully regulate and, where needed, compel: Isro's own capacity, domestic firms or ventures in which Indian licensees hold the controls. That route is slower. It also leaves   the off-switch in this country.

(The writer is programme director (Eastern India), WHEELS Global Foundation)