New Delhi: At the India Mobile Conference held recently on October 15, 2024, Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal teamed up with head of Reliance Jio Mukesh Ambani to demand that satellite companies pay on equal terms for licenses and acquire spectrum like traditional operators. This is a significant instance in India’s competitive telecommunications sector.
Mittal stated that existing telecom companies are needed to extend the satellite services into the unreached remote regions. He said: “Satellite operators wishing to penetrate the metropolitan markets and retail consumers have to comply with the same licensing regulations as other telecom operators.” The companies should gain the spectrum, besides, undergo identical regulatory conditions as applied on the ground-based players.
This appeal stands against the backdrop of a recent letter by Reliance Jio to Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, appealing against the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) suggestion that satellite broadband be allocated administratively and not by auction. The TRAI recommendation has been supported by global entities like Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper who prefer administrative allocations over competitive bidding.
These statements are made in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thus emphasize this issue at a national level. The common stand taken by these two telecom giants further depicts a common cause for a fair play ground in the rapidly changing digital scenario in India.
