India has done well to move from a “closed skies” policy for satellite communication to a more liberal policy—as per a Business Standard report, Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) is working on drafting this, to allow private companies to buy or lease foreign communication satellites for operations over the Indian skies as well as the South Asian region. That would be a big boost for Indian direct-to-home broadcasters and core banking and ATM services who can then reduce cost of transactions.
But for all this to materialise, the government must ensure that it doesn’t botch up prospects as it did with in the Hughes Network Systems matter—though policy allows, since 2000, private players to build their own satellites, with upto 74% FDI, Hughes’ application to invest $500 million to build satellites with data delivery speeds 100 times of what the conventional ones provide in India has been hanging fire since 2010. India has a woeful shortage of local satellite capacity—thanks to Isro’s limited ability with rockets to launch satellites into geo-stationery orbit where communication satellites are placed, the Indian space agency has to anyway lease services from foreign satellites with Ku band transponders since it doesn’t have enough of its own. The demand for such satellites is set to rise from 214 transponders in 2013 to 376 by 2023. Yet, the unnecessary controversy over the Antrix-Devas deal—where orbit spectrum was irrationally equated with telecom spectrum to drum up extraordinary notional losses—has left the government wary of truly freeing up the sector. While the government moves to “open skies” for satellite communications, it first needs to exorcise its demons. Else, realising Digital India—satcom has a great role to play in providing easy connectivity to remote areas—would get that much more difficult.
