India favours Musk, says no spectrum auction

New Delhi: In a boost to Elon Musk’s Starlink, Communications Minister JyotiradityaScindiahas said the spectrum for satellite broadband will be allocated and not auctioned as sought by Indian billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal.

The satellite broadband spectrum will, however, be not given free and sector regulator Trai will fix a price for the resource, he told PTI in a text and video 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 can’t think of a single country that auctions spectrum for satellite,”Scindia said.

India is a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a 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.