Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX To Seek Government Permit To Launch Starlink Internet Services In India

The world's richest person Elon Musk¡¯s spacecraft engineering company SpaceX is set to seek a permit to launch satellite internet services in India under its Starlink brand, becoming the third company to apply for such a permit, as per an Economic Times report.

Elon Musk's SpaceX May Launch Starlink Services In India

SpaceX will also seek statutory approvals from the government for landing rights and market access, the report said, adding that it is likely to seek approvals from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to set up local gateways.

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Earlier this year, the Indian government asked Starlink to refund all its pre-orders until it received licences to operate in the country, as per a Reuters report.

SpaceX will ¡°very shortly¡± apply for a Global Mobile Personal Communications By Satellite (GMPCS) services license to Indian authorities, the report said. This move will pit the Elon Musk-owned company against the likes of Bharti Group-backed OneWeb and Reliance Jio Infocomm's satellite arm for a slice of the nascent market, with the Indian space economy expected to grow and be worth $13 billion by 2025.

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More About Starlink

Starlink is the world's first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit to deliver broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls etc.

Leveraging advanced satellites and user hardware coupled with deep experience with both spacecraft and on-orbit operations makes Starlink deliver high-speed, low-latency internet to users all over the world, its website mentions.

As far as its working is concerned, it states that most satellite internet services come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at 35,786 km. As a result, the round trip data time between the user and satellite¡ªalso known as latency¡ªis high, which makes it nearly impossible to support streaming, online gaming, video calls or other high data rate activities.

So, Starlink is a constellation of thousands of satellites that orbit the planet much closer to Earth, at about 550km, and cover the entire globe. And because Starlink satellites are in a low orbit, latency is significantly lower¡ªaround 20 ms vs 600+ ms.

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