No spectrum auction: After Trump's victory, a win for Elon Musk in India

Union Minister for Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday (November 7) said the spectrum for satellite broadband will be allocated and not auctioned as sought by business tycoons Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal.

This news comes a day after Donald Trump was elected as the 47th President of the US and is seen as a major boost to the world's richest person and Trump supporter Elon Musk's Starlink.

What Scindia said

The satellite broadband spectrum will however be not given free and sector regulator Trai will fix a price for the resource, Scindia told PTI in an interview.

"Every country has to follow the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), 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 (ITU), a United Nations (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 – India's largest and second-largest operators, respectively – feel that giving away the satellite broadband airwaves at a pre-decided price by the government will create an uneven playing field since they had to compete in an auction to get spectrum for their terrestrial wireless phone networks.

The two are vying for a piece of the satellite broadband segment as well.

What Starlink wants

Musk-led Starlink is demanding administrative allotment of licences in line with the global trend as it looks to tap into the world's fastest-growing mobile telephony and internet market.

Scindia said the Telecom Act of 2023 passed in December has put the matter in 'Schedule 1', which means that the Satcom spectrum will be allocated administratively.

Such an allocation will be at a government-decided price, and allow foreign firms like Starlink to offer voice and data services. If the spectrum were to be auctioned, 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 minister said that the regulatory process is very clear and transparent.

The new Telecom Act has been passed, and the Satellite spectrum is very clearly a part of 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."

Last month, Musk, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), 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.

(With agency inputs)