Having just lost a battle with Elon Musk over how India’s satellite spectrum is awarded, Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani could face a bigger challenge if Musk’s Starlink launches services in India and the two go head-to-head on price.
India’s government said on Tuesday it will allocate spectrum for satellite broadband administratively and not via auction, hours after Musk criticized the auction route being sought by rival billionaire Ambani as “unprecedented”.
Musk’s Starlink, a unit of SpaceX which has 6,400 active satellites orbiting earth to provide low-latency broadband to 4 million customers, has publicly expressed interest in launching in India, but its plans faced repeated regulatory roadblocks.
Ambani, who runs India’s biggest telecom company, Reliance Jio, had tried since last year to seek a “balanced competitive landscape” and wanted to keep Musk at bay, as experts say a spectrum auction would have required much more investment and deterred foreign players.
