Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: As Airtel announced a partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring its affordable satellite internet service to India, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman, Bharti Enterprises, said on March 12 that a new era of seamless global connectivity beckons for customers. Airtel has signed an agreement with Musk’s SpaceX to bring Starlink’s high-speed internet services to its customers in India. This is the first agreement to be signed in India, which is subject to SpaceX receiving its own authorisations to sell Starlink in the country.
Mittal said that soon, customers will be able to carry their mobiles to the remotest part of the world, with them in the skies and blue oceans.
In his opening remark at the recently concluded ‘Mobile World Congress 2025’ in Barcelona, Mittal had made a call to both the telecom and satellite players to work together, combine their strengths, and complete the mission of connecting the unconnected, covering the oceans and the skies as well as difficult-to-reach areas. “I am glad that this is being followed through with active announcements of partnerships between satellite companies and telecom operators,” he said in a statement.
According to Mittal, he had made a similar appeal in my keynote address at the Mobile World Congress in 2017 for operators to slash roaming charges, which were preventing customers from carrying their home networks and seeking local SIMs or Wi-Fi hotspots.
“The industry responded favourably; roaming rates went south, and the international home network switch-on rates shot up. Today, roaming tariffs across the globe are affordable,” he noted, adding that “I have no doubt the satellite and the telecom industry globally will respond to my call to combine their strengths”.
For the telecom industry, the addition of satellite technology should be no different from bringing new technologies to its customers. “Just like 4G, 5G, and 6G in the future, we will now have one more technology in our mix, i.e. SAT-G,” said Mittal.
Airtel and SpaceX will explore offering Starlink equipment in Airtel’s retail stores, Starlink services via Airtel to business customers, opportunities to connect communities, schools, and health centres, among many others, in even the most rural parts of India.
Airtel and SpaceX will also explore how Starlink could help expand and enhance the Airtel network, as well as SpaceX’s ability to utilise and benefit from Airtel’s ground network infrastructure and other capabilities in India, said the company.
