India’s largest telecom player, Reliance Jio, has announced plans to enter the satellite communications market with its own constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).
India’s largest telecom player, Reliance Jio, has announced plans to enter the satellite communications market with its own constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).
According to The New Indian Express, this could potentially lead to direct competition with Starlink led by Elon Musk and other global satellite internet providers.
Reliance Jio Chairman Akash Ambani, during his speech at the annual general meeting, said that the company is currently evaluating a move to develop its own LEO satellite constellation and will also collaborate with leading global satellite operators.
«This announcement is significant as Jio is already India’s largest telecom operator and one of the world’s largest mobile service providers by subscriber base,» the publication emphasizes.
Meanwhile, CNBC, quoting the chairman of the board of Reliance Jio, notes that the Indian company, before launching its own satellites, intends to cooperate with the world’s leading «constellation providers» to lease their capacity, as it seeks to deploy satellite communications as quickly as possible.
At the same time, Ambani said, Jio will build its own «long-term sovereign capability.» Jio also intends to build its own «ground station infrastructure» in India, he said, which will support partner constellations as well as its own future satellites.
It is worth recalling that the news of these plans came after Jio Platforms filed draft documents for an initial public offering last Friday.
Jio Platforms already partners with Luxembourg-based SES to provide satellite broadband services in India, but SES primarily operates geostationary and medium-orbit satellites and does not currently have a network of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.
In addition to entering the satellite communications market, Jio also confirmed its long-term goal of migrating its entire subscriber base to 5G by 2030.
As dev.ua wrote, SpaceX stated that the EU’s plans to limit satellite frequencies threaten the stability of Starlink in Ukraine.
