Reports from ICRA suggest a tremendous hike in Indian Satcom users by 2025. The numbers are likely to touch 2 million generating a revenue of Rs 5,000-6,000 crore revenue annually.

LEO, the New Gen Low-earth Orbit satellite is proving extremely efficient. The Big players in the telecom industry like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Bharti-backed One Web, and also Amazon’s Kuiper Project are monitoring the possibilities of offering satellite broadband in India via the new-gen LEO. If things move as planned, we hear that the consumer base for satellite communication in India could go as high as 2 million by the year 2025. This means that in just 4 years, the industry is going to witness a huge revolution in terms of entertainment and communication.

Satcom has more access to a variety of terrains and even extremely remote areas of the country. This will enhance the broadcasting quality and also give more geographical coverage.

What’s the catch in this amazing concept? Hear it from Sabyasachi Majumdar, Group Head & Senior Vice President, ICRA.

The Flip Side

There have been a lot of policy-related uncertainties, including vague licensing regime and lack of clarity on spectrum frequency and allocation, which can act as deterrents to the proliferation of this technology, said Sabyasachi Majumdar.

Our sources reveal that a Letter of Intent has been received by OneWeb from DoI to provide mobile personal communication across the globe by satellite GMPCS services. Their mission is to provide worldwide coverage next year with the effective utilization of 648 satellites. The other players in the race are Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon’s Kuiper Project.

“While the global adoption rates are also slow owing to a variety of reasons including high prices and low speeds, both these aspects should improve with time,” Majumdar said.

The Indian penetration is comparatively slow, currently being restricted to0.3 million enterprise subscribers, as per ICRA.

This is because of restrictions on last-mile connectivity through satellite to retail subscribers, in addition to restrictive policies to operate in this space, ICRA officials stated.

With all the service providers geared to move ahead with their plans, we can expect a major turnaround in the satellite consumer base by 2022 itself.