Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the world’s two richest businessmen, are set to take on Airtel’s Sunil Mittal and Reliance Jio’s Mukesh Ambani in the high-speed broadband and internet space as they have approached the Indian government with separate plans to offer satellite-based internet connectivity.
Sources said that Musk’s satellite internet venture, Starlink, and Amazon have held separate consultations with the telecom ministry – as well as the Department of Space – for starting satellite-based internet services in India, “though they are yet to apply for a license through the formal route”.
The plan of the companies is to offer large swathes of bandwidth – with speeds as high as 1 GBPS and even more – through low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites that would be deployed at a distance of around 1,000 km from Earth.