It was the clash between the local and the global as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Mukesh Ambani’s Jio sparred over issues relating to pricing of satellite spectrum. The open house discussions convened by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday, saw Jio stating that it’s “not afraid of competition” but that ‘same services same rules’ must apply.
Jio has made a case for the auction of satellite spectrum, while Starlink has maintained that since worldwide, auction does not take place and it’s technically infeasible, administrative allocation is the way forward. Starlink has found support from another global player, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which is also backing administrative allocation.
Sharpening its attack, Jio charged operators like Starlink of possible predatory pricing, a charge vehemently dismissed by the latter.
“We are working in a hyper-competitive market. We are not afraid of competition. It is the other way around. Actually, the entities who are wanting to be in this space via satellite, in the telecommunication space via satellite, are afraid of competition, and that’s why they want all this kind of protection,” Ravi Gandhi of Reliance Jio said.
“I wanted to very quickly touch on an unfortunate and entirely false allegation of possible predatory pricing by next-generation systems. Debunking this is thankfully very easy. We encourage Trai and all interested participants to simply look at Starlink’s operations in any of the 113 markets we are live in today…we maintain absolute transparency on Starlink pricing and performance around the world,” Parnil Urdhwareshe, director, Starlink Satellite Communications, said.
He said that Starlink prices for any country are readily available on its website for anyone to cross check the overwhelming public evidence against these allegations. “That said, we are proud of making satellite broadband affordable for users who have so far been unserved, and where certain other satellite operators are committed to doing the same,” Urdhwareshe added.
Jio was supported by peer, Bharti Airtel which raised level playing field issues, stating that if the satellite operators are providing similar set of services in terms of serving the urban retail consumers, then similar set of rules should apply to them. Bharti-owned Eutelsat OneWeb, along with other operators also flagged concerns around predatory pricing by high capacity operators such as Starlink.
To an argument by Starlink that customer choice would get impacted if the options are restricted to telecom operators, Rahul Vatts, chief regulatory officer of Bharti Airtel said, “asking for a level playing field and similar conditions for similar service does not mean that customer choices would get impacted”.
The government has so far has stuck to its position that satellite spectrum would not be auctioned as the International Telecommunications Union norms mandates assignment, not auction. In the Telecom Act, the government has put the allocation of satellite spectrum in Schedule 1, which has identified areas where spectrum can be allocated without auctions. However, telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has made it clear that no auction does not mean that spectrum would be given for free. The Trai is determining the administrative charge for such allocation.
At a recent Express Adda, when asked how he will deal with the situation as global players are pushing for administrative routes, while local ones for auctions, Scindia said, “with confidence”.
