- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
STARLINK, the satellite-internet division of billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, on Monday (1) registered its business in India, company documents filed with the Indian government showed, Reuters reported.
Starlink has planned to launch internet services across the country.
Starlink has a local unit – Starlink Satellite Communications Private Limited – and it will allow the company to apply for licenses which it has to have from the government before providing broadband and other satellite-based communication services, the report said.
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“Pleased to share that SpaceX now has a 100% owned subsidiary in India,” Sanjay Bhargava, the country director for Starlink in India, said in a LinkedIn post.
“We can now start applying for licenses, open bank accounts, etc,” he added. Bhargava, according to his LinkedIn profile, joined the company last month.
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Starlink is one of those companies that are launching small satellites as part of a low-Earth orbiting network to provide low-latency broadband internet services across the globe, with a particular focus on remote areas that terrestrial internet infrastructure struggles to reach, Reuters added.
Among Starlink’s competitors are Amazon.com’s Kuiper and OneWeb which is co-owned by the British government and Bharti Enterprises, India.
According to the company’s filing, Starlink plans “to carry on the business of telecommunication services”, including satellite broadband internet services, content storage and streaming, multi-media communication and others.
It is also set to deal in devices such as satellite phones, network equipment, wired and wireless communication devices besides data transmission and reception equipment, the filing added.
Starlink also said separately that it will focus on “catalyzing rural development” in India through its broadband services, according to a company presentation recently shared by Bhargava on LinkedIn.
The company plans to have 200,000 Starlink devices in India by December next year, 80 per cent of which will be in rural districts, it said in the presentation.
Starlink has already got more than 5,000 pre-orders for its devices in India.
(With Reuters input)
