India Has Licensed Three Satellite Broadband Operators, Starlink Among Them, on Security Terms That Keep Indian Traffic and Data Inside the Country

India has granted telecom licences to three operators of low-orbit satellite broadband: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications and Eutelsat OneWeb. That is the position in the Ministry of Communications statement of 8 October 2026, which says each licensee must now demonstrate compliance with security conditions before it can ask for spectrum, the radio frequencies a satellite service needs to run. Starlink’s licence dates from June 2025, and its first-generation fleet of 4,408 satellites was authorised on 8 July 2025. No operator has yet been assigned spectrum, and the sections below set out the steps that remain.

Three licences, one rulebook

Satellite broadband in India passes through two regulators before a customer can order a dish. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issues the telecom licence under the Unified Licence regime. Under the Telecommunications Act, 2023, the government can also assign spectrum and enforce security conditions, as the Press Information Bureau (PIB) backgrounder of 23 September 2025 explains. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) is the second gate. It authorises private space activity, which the space reforms of 2020 and the Indian Space Policy of 2023 opened up beyond ISRO.

The licence in question is GMPCS, short for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite. The PIB backgrounder records that Jio Satellite Communication Limited and OneWeb India Communications Private Limited were licensed first and that Starlink Satellite Communications Private Limited received its licence in June 2025. A PTI report of 8 May 2025 shows how that licence came about. DoT had issued Starlink a Letter of Intent, a step that comes before the licence, after Starlink agreed to security norms that had been tightened earlier that week.

IN-SPACe followed on 8 July 2025. Its authorisation covers the Gen1 constellation of 4,408 satellites orbiting between 540 and 570 km and capable of about 600 Gbps of throughput over India, according to the PTI report of 9 July 2025. It runs for five years or until the Gen1 fleet reaches the end of its operational life, whichever comes first.

On 20 August 2025 the Unique Identification Authority of India appointed Starlink a sub-authentication and sub-eKYC user agency. Customers will therefore be able to verify themselves through Aadhaar on a voluntary basis, PIB states.

What the security conditions require

The conditions come from a DoT Office Memorandum dated 5 May 2025, which AZB & Partners summarised on 29 May 2025. Where it conflicts with the existing Unified Licence terms, the memorandum prevails. MediaNama and AZB between them list the main requirements:

• Interception and monitoring facilities must be provided to the government at the gateway, the ground station that connects the satellites to the internet. Lawful interception means the legal power of security agencies to listen to or record communications.
• Specific gateway and hub locations need security clearance.
• Network control and monitoring, the point of presence used for the service and the DNS (the internet’s address lookup) must sit inside India.
• No traffic to or from India may pass through a gateway outside the country.
• Special monitoring zones cover land within 50 km of the international border and waters out to 200 nautical miles along the coast.
• Operators must give an undertaking not to copy or decrypt Indian users’ data outside India.
• At least 20 per cent of the ground segment must be indigenised within five years of commercial launch, under a year-wise manufacturing plan.
• Every user terminal must be registered in India, and operators must be able to restrict service in an area during hostilities or on a law enforcement request.

Operators must also demonstrate their monitoring capability to DoT before they begin operating, the PTI report of 8 May 2025 states. The telecom minister said in December 2025 that operators had been given provisional spectrum so they could show that they meet these conditions, according to Business Today of 28 December 2025.

How the spectrum price was set

The Telecommunications Act, 2023 sets auctions as the default way to assign spectrum, except for uses listed in its First Schedule, which are assigned administratively, meaning the government fixes a price and assigns the spectrum without a bid. TRAI, the telecom regulator, records in its recommendations of 9 May 2025 that item 16 of that Schedule lists GMPCS and very small aperture terminal services among the administrative cases.

TRAI recommended 4 per cent of adjusted gross revenue, which is revenue after the deductions the licence allows, plus Rs 500 per urban subscriber per year. Rural and remote users would be exempt from the second charge. It also proposed a five-year assignment, extendable by up to two years, and asked that spectrum be assigned within 30 days of an application once the satellite network has in-principle clearance.

The Digital Communications Commission, DoT’s top decision body, settled a different figure on 3 September 2026, according to ThePrint of 9 October 2026. It approved 5 per cent of adjusted gross revenue, 4 per cent in rural and remote areas, and a five-year assignment with a possible two-year extension. The per-subscriber charge was not accepted, Angel One reports. The decision still needs an inter-ministerial panel and the Cabinet.

A second TRAI process is open on the licence itself. On 8 April 2026 TRAI issued a consultation paper on a new Satellite Communication Network authorisation, with comments due on 6 May and counter-comments on 20 May 2026. In its counter-comments of 27 May 2026, Starlink India asked TRAI to allow direct-to-device service, where ordinary phones connect to satellites, over mobile spectrum. It also asked for use-it-or-lose-it and open-access conditions on whoever holds spectrum.

What Starlink says it has built

Lauren Dreyer, a Starlink vice president, spoke at the 10th India Mobile Congress in New Delhi on 7 October 2026. ThePrint reports her saying Starlink had built “20 gateway sites comprising hundreds of antennas” and had set up “controls at every layer for India and keeping Indian user data within India.” She added: “We’re standing ready to serve India once India is ready.”

ThePrint also reports that Starlink has applied again to IN-SPACe for its second-generation constellation after an earlier application was rejected. It lists no decision.

The public dispute of 7 to 9 October 2026

Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX owns Starlink, posted on X that Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs,” according to Open magazine and TechCrunch. Neither report says he named anyone or offered evidence. The Ministry of Communications answered on 8 October without naming him or Starlink. Its statement called the framework fair and non-discriminatory, said all three licensees are “at broadly the same regulatory stage,” and called the suggestion of unfairness “baseless and misconceived.”

On 9 October a Minister of State said the licences were issued and spectrum provisionally allocated, and that “the issue is pending with MHA for security clearance,” meaning the Ministry of Home Affairs. The telecom minister said that spectrum will be assigned once the revenue-based charge is decided and that each operator can start once it meets the security conditions, ThePrint reports. TechCrunch adds that Starlink had favoured administrative assignment of spectrum, that Jio had pushed for an auction and that the government chose administrative assignment. Reliance Jio did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Where the launch stands

As of 14 October 2026 the sequence for each operator reads as follows.

1. Licence from DoT: done for all three.
2. IN-SPACe authorisation: done for Starlink Gen1; Gen2 is pending, per ThePrint.
3. Security assessment: under way for all three, per the 8 October statement.
4. Spectrum charge: approved by the Digital Communications Commission on 3 September 2026, awaiting an inter-ministerial panel and Cabinet.
5. Spectrum assignment: an operator may seek it once step 3 is completed for that operator, per the 8 October statement.
6. Foreign investment approval: ThePrint reports that Starlink, as a wholly SpaceX-owned company, still needs it and does not say whether it has been granted.

Amazon’s Kuiper must still complete its licensing, the telecom minister said on 9 October. None of the pages cited here gives an official launch date. The PIB backgrounder counts 1,002.85 million internet subscribers in April to June 2025, with rural penetration of about 46 per 100 people. It describes satellite internet as a complement to terrestrial networks such as BharatNet fibre, suited to remote villages, hilly terrain, border areas and islands.