The Indian government put the brakes on Elon Musk-backed Starlink’s efforts

Starlink, part of Elon Musk's SpaceX, informed several individuals in India by the end of November 2021 that it would refund their pre-orders, more than a month after New Delhi called the firm "booking/rendering of satellite Internet service" which told to stop South Asian market without a license.

In an email to those who pre-ordered Starlink in India, the company said it "looks forward to making Starlink available in India as soon as possible," but is currently "under the license to operate". There is no clarity on the timeline for now.

“As has always been the case, you can get a refund at any time,” the company wrote, outlining the steps to avail the refund.

Starlink had received over 5,000 pre-orders for its equipment in India and was looking to pilot pilots in the country. Last year, the company appointed an India head, who reached out to multiple stakeholders in the country to explore ways of collaboration.

In late November 2021, the Indian government told the company, which competes with Bharti Group-backed OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper, in a public statement that it had to comply with the rules and refrain from taking pre-orders "with immediate effect". needed.

Starlink, which shipped over 100,000 terminals to customers, sees India as a huge potential market. Starlink's India ex-head Sanjay Bhargava said last year the company planned to deploy over 200,000 active terminals in over 160,000 districts of India by the end of December 2022.

“At Starlink, we want to serve the underprivileged. We look forward to working with fellow broadband providers, solution providers in aspirational districts to create and save lives,” he wrote.

Even though more than half a billion people are online in India, many are still offline. According to industry estimates, crores of Indians living in rural areas do not have access to any broadband network.

“The approval process of the government is complicated. As of now there is no application pending with the government, so the ball is in our court to apply for consideration, which we are working on."said officials.

“Our approach would be to get pilot approval quickly if PAN India approval would take a long time. We are hopeful that we will get approval for a pilot program or pan-India approval in the next few months,” Bhargava said in October, adding that if it fails to get the government's approval, the actual number of terminals it could liquidate. Is. The end of next year will be "much less than that or less than zero".said officials.

While Starlink has already received over 5,000 pre-orders for its devices in India, it has not begun any services.

Starlink is one of a growing number of companies launching small satellites as part of a low-Earth orbit network to provide low-latency broadband internet services around the world, with a particular focus on remote areas that terrestrial internet infrastructure struggles to reach.