He said that spectrum for satellite broadband will be allocated, not auctioned as some Indian billionaires like Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal wanted. Satellite broadband spectrum will however not be free and Trai will set a price for the resource.".
"Every country has to follow the International Telecommunications Union, which is the organisation that lays out the policy for spectrum in space or satellites, and the ITU has been very clear in terms of the spectrum being given out on an assignment basis. In addition, if you look across the world today, I cannot think of a single country that auctions spectrum for satellite," Scindia said.
India is a member of the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency for digital technology.
Musk's Starlink and global peers like Amazon's Project Kuiper back an administrative allocation.
While Ambani's Reliance Jio has been vocal about the need to allocate such spectrum through an auction to provide a level playing field to legacy operators who buy airwaves and set up infrastructure like telecom towers, Mittal last month at an industry event where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present articulated the need to use bidding for such allocation.
Jio and Mittal's Bharti Airtel - the former India's largest and latter its second-biggest operators - maintain that the government's decision to give away satellite broadband airwaves at a pre-decided price will create an uneven playing field since they had to compete in an auction to gain spectrum for their terrestrial wireless phone networks.
The two are vying for a share of the satellite broadband market, too.
Starlink led by Musk is pushing for administrative spectrum allotment as it taps into the fastest-growing world mobile telephony and internet market.
"The Telecom Act of 2023 was passed in December. Satcom falls in 'Schedule 1' meaning that all this will be allocated administratively.".
That kind of an allocation will be at a government-decided price, and will let foreign firms like Starlink offer voice and data services. If the spectrum had been put on an auction, it would have made it costlier for Starlink to roll out services.
Starlink has applied for a licence to start operations in the country.
Scindia, however, offered no clues on the fate of his application.
The process is very clear and transparent, the minister said, quoting it again.
The new Telecom Act has been passed, and Satellite spectrum very clearly comes under that in schedule one, he pointed out.
".and therefore, we are open to looking at the application of any entity that wants to invest in India at this point in time. I think only one or two licenses have been given out. And whoever else wants to participate, India is surely going to welcome that," the minister said.
Last month, in a post on X, Musk termed the demand made by Jio for shunning sector regulator Trai's consultation paper on satellite broadband being allocated and not auctioned as "unprecedented". and when Mittal made the pitch in the presence of the Prime Minister, he asked if it was "too much trouble" to allow Starlink to provide internet services in India.
It was perhaps the first time when Musk, whose networth of USD 241 billion is more than the combined wealth of Ambani, Mittal and Gautam Adani, has openly spoken against the demands of level playing field made by Indian firms.
The PayPal genius, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X (formerly Twitter), product daily on reporting and sharing his view on top wide-ranging issues.
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