Elon Musk’s and Jeff Bezos-led Amazon have, for the first time, directly entered the battle over satellite spectrum allotment in India, backing the administrative route, going up against telecom market leader Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone Idea which want an auction.
Starlink and Amazon, along with Bharti Group-backed OneWeb and Canada’s , have told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) that auctioning satellite airwaves would make the business of satellite communications unviable. They contend that auctions would make broadband from space services unaffordable and deprive consumers, particularly in rural and underserved regions, of high-speed broadband connectivity.
Jio and Vodafone Idea want satellite spectrum to be auctioned to guarantee a competitive landscape among rival service providers. The Department of Telecommunications also supports auctions.
Interestingly, telecom operator Bharti Airtel, also backed by the Bharti Group, opposed an auction. But its reasons were different than those of the global satcom companies.
In its submission, Airtel said the auction of satellite spectrum will put Indian players at a disadvantage in comparison to the global competing operators.
“Airtel is concerned that auctioning the satellite spectrum and creating an exclusiveness will create barriers for competition as competitors may block access to it by bidding and winning partial or full spectrum in spite of having no such global allocation, and make satellite systems redundant and severely hamper the emerging space ecosystem in the country,” it said.
The companies have been responding to a consultation paper floated by the telecom regulator, seeking views on the mode of allotment.