PremiumWith India preparing to launch 5G services in every city of the country., global firms are showing interest in the businesses related to the country's space.
As per new update, Elon Musk-owned SpaceX has applied to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for a global mobile personal communication by satellite services (GMPCS) licence to launch broadband-from-space services in India under its Starlink brand.
Now the government will decide on the licence following the due procedure laid by the department, said an official.
SpaceX is the third company to apply for the licence as Bharti Group-backed OneWeb and Reliance Jio Infocomm's satellite arm have already secured licence.
Musk's SpaceXis the world's leading provider of launch services and is the first private firm to have delivered astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The firm provides internet connectivity globally with Starlink constellation.
After getting the licence, SpaceX needs to get approval from the Department of Space and after that get spectrum allocated for offering services.
Apart from this, SpaceX will also need to establish an in-country earth station and deploy its global satellite bandwidth capacity in India.
For this, SpaceX needs te get clearances from the Indian National Space Promotion & Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), which is a central regulatory body mandated to attract private capital in the space sector.
The competition is intensifying in India's relatively nascent broadband-from-space services segment, which could be worth USD 13 billion by 2025, with Jio, OneWeb, Nelco of the Tata Group, Canada's Telesat, and Amazon, too, exploring the launch of satellite broadband services in India.
With ANI inputs.