DoT secy to meet satellite cos, telcos on local manufacturing of satcom gear

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) secretary Anshu Prakash will next week meet diverse industry stakeholders, including telcos, tech startups, IoT players and global satellite companies such as Bharti-backed OneWeb, Hughes Communications and Inmarsat to discuss a comprehensive roadmap for locally manufacturing satellite communications gear such as gateways and related infrastructure like IoT devices, customer premise equipment (CPEs), antennae systems and sensors.

The meeting, ahead of the upcoming new Spacecom policy, will also discuss ways to create an enabling regulatory regime for global low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation operators to establish in-country gateways in India, especially as India’s dependence on foreign satellite operators won’t go away anytime soon, given that ISRO meets only around 50% of the country’s needs.

“The draft Spacecom policy circulated by Department of Space (DoS) emphasises increased participation of the commercial Indian industry to provide space-based communications, and an interactive session chaired by the telecom secretary is planned with industry on July 12 to develop a satcoms infrastructure ecosystem, with the possibility of using indigenous components in satellite gateways and also fostering local equipment manufacturing of CPEs, IoT devices, antennae and sensors,” DoT’s satellite cell said in an internal invite to industry stakeholders. ET has reviewed a copy of the invitation letter.

The DoT invite for the virtual meeting added that “with new technologies like high-throughput satellites and LEO satellite (constellations) getting deployed,” the interactive session would also discuss the “requisite regulatory framework for establishment of satellite gateways in India” to support operations of international satellite operators.

Top representatives of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Saankhya Labs, Skylo Technologies, Bharat Electronics and Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) will participate in the meeting. Officials of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Niti Aayog, DoS, Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) and IIT Chennai will also be present.

However, Elon Musk’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos-founded Amazon, which like OneWeb are also setting up LEO satellite constellations to deliver high-speed satellite broadband services globally, including in India, have not been invited to the virtual meeting that will be chaired by Prakash. The DoT could not immediately be reached for comment on why Starlink and Amazon were left out.

OneWeb and Musk’s Starlink are gearing up to start satellite broadband services in India next year. Amazon, which is also building a LEO satellite constellation as part of its Project Kuiper global space internet drive, is yet to disclose India plans.

The meeting has been convened just days after Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal said group satellite arm, OneWeb is in talks with Sasken Technologies, ISRO’s commercial arm, NewSpace India and some Israeli tech companies to sharply cut user access terminal prices before launching fast satellite internet services in India.

OneWeb, he said, would also build two satellite in-country gateways or `ground stations’ that would be ready by February-March 2022.