Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet may soon be launched in India

Business magnate and Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk may enter the Indian telecom sector through his private space firm, SpaceX, as part of its Starlink project.

The satellite-based service is taking off, in every sense. On Thursday, SpaceX, stated that in just four months since it entered beta, the Starlink satellite internet service has amassed more than 10,000 users across the world.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had on August 2020 issued a consultation paper on a roadmap to ‘Promote Broadband Connectivity and Enhanced Broadband’.

Replying to the paper, SpaceX’s Satellite Government Affairs Vice President Patricia Cooper said Starlink’s high-speed satellite network would advance the goal of delivering broadband connectivity in the near term to all Indians.

Having achieved success in the venture so far, Musk now plans to disrupt the Indian telecom industry by stepping into the telecommunications sector with Starlink. The initial plan for SpaceX is to enter the Indian telecommunications industry with 100-Mbps satellite-based internet. SpaceX has stated that Starlink is now eyeing the $1 trillion market made up of in-flight internet, maritime services, demand in China and India.

The Elon Musk-owned firm also reveals Starlink’s service is ‘meeting and exceeding 100/20 megabits per second (Mbps) throughout individual users’ and many are seeing latency ‘at or below 31 milliseconds.’

SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 Starlink satellites on May 23, 2019 and today, the constellation includes 1,095 devices.