Somewhere over the Indian Ocean right now, a Starlink satellite is passing overhead. It has the licence, the approvals, the hardware agreements. What it does not have is permission to switch on. Bharti group-backed Eutelsat OneWeb is in the same position. So is Orbit Connect India, the joint venture between Jio and Luxembourg-based SES. These companies offer services that exist on paper but nowhere else. The last gate, called the security clearance, remains shut, and the Indian authorities have not said what would open it.
On June 17, the Department of Telecommunications published the draft Telecommunications (Spectrum Assignment by Administrative Process) Rules, 2026. The notification, issued under the Telecommunications Act, 2023, sets out the terms and conditions for assigning spectrum through an administrative route rather than an auction. The DoT has given stakeholders 30 days to submit comments.
The rules govern spectrum allocation across a wide range of users, from law enforcement agencies and state-run broadcasters to VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) operators and geostationary satellite service providers. But their most consequential aspect is that they have left out non-geostationary orbit (GSO) players such as Starlink.
Two kinds of satellites, two very different services
Geostationary orbit satellites
Most people think of a satellite as a single object far up in space that bounces signals around. Traditional satellite television and VSAT internet works roughly like that. The satellite sits in what is called a geostationary orbit, about 36,000 kilometres above the earth’s surface. At that altitude, the satellite moves at exactly the same speed as the earth rotates, so it appears fixed in the sky relative to a dish on the ground. The technology is proven and reliable, but the distance creates an unavoidable delay in the signal, which makes it unsuitable for the kind of seamless, low-latency broadband people expect on their phones and laptops.
Non-geostationary orbit satellites
The newer generation of satellite internet services works differently. Instead of one satellite far away, they use hundreds or thousands of smaller satellites orbiting much closer to earth, typically between 500 and 1,200 kilometres up. Because they are moving constantly, a large enough constellation can ensure that there is always at least one satellite visible from any point on the ground. Latency drops to the range of 20 to 40 milliseconds, comparable to a decent home broadband connection. This is the technology used by Elon Musk-backed Starlink, Bharti group-backed Eutelsat OneWeb, and the Jio-SES joint venture called Orbit Connect India.
The DoT’s draft rules, however, do not yet apply to these services.
A framework that covers the old, not the new
The rules published on June 17 govern spectrum allocation for traditional satellite operators, primarily those using geostationary satellites. This covers VSAT providers, teleport operators, direct-to-home broadcasters and the like. Companies like Hughes Network Systems and Nelco, which currently offer satellite connectivity to enterprises, fall under this framework. According to ET Telecom, they pay spectrum charges in the range of 3 to 4 per cent of their adjusted gross revenue.
Players like Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and Amazon Leo, which use non-geostationary constellations, are excluded for now. According to an official who spoke to ET Telecom on condition of anonymity, spectrum assignment rules for these players are being worked out separately by the DoT and Cabinet approval will need to be taken for pricing and other modalities.
Trai has already submitted its recommendations, suggesting a spectrum charge of 4 per cent of adjusted gross revenue for these operators. The DoT, however, has pushed for 5 per cent, with a 1 per cent discount for operators serving remote and hard-to-reach areas, Business Standard previously reported. The Digital Communications Commission, the top decision-making body within the communications ministry, will take the final call.
The government has published a framework for one part of the satellite industry. The other part remains in a regulatory holding pattern.
The difference
The GSO-NGSO divide in India’s draft rules is not a quirk of bureaucratic sequencing. It reflects a deliberate policy choice, and one that puts India out of step with the direction regulators in the US and the UK have been moving in.
In the US, the Federal Communications Commission has been doing precisely the opposite. For decades, NGSO operators were required to comply with strict power limits, known as Equivalent Power Flux Density or EPFD limits, that were designed to protect geostationary satellites from interference. Those rules were written in the late 1990s, before large-scale LEO constellations existed, and satellite companies like SpaceX and Amazon had long argued they had become an unnecessary constraint on NGSO systems’ ability to deliver higher speeds. On April 30, 2026, the FCC voted to scrap that old framework and replace it with a performance-based coordination system that allows GSO and NGSO operators to negotiate interference protections directly, according to the Wilson Sonsini law firm. The FCC estimated the change could unlock a sevenfold increase in satellite broadband capacity. The move was explicitly designed to lower regulatory barriers for LEO constellation operators.
The UK’s Ofcom has taken a similar direction, if at a more deliberate pace. The regulator introduced a dedicated NGSO licensing framework back in 2021, creating a separate licence category for non-geostationary operators to streamline their access to spectrum. Since then, Ofcom has been steadily expanding spectrum availability for both GSO and NGSO systems in parallel, consulting on how to enable coexistence rather than choosing one over the other. In March 2026, Ofcom announced changes specifically aimed at speeding up its NGSO licensing process and reducing the administrative burden on satellite constellation operators.
Both the US and UK have reached the same conclusion: GSO and NGSO technologies serve different purposes and will increasingly coexist, so regulation should enable that rather than sort them into separate queues with separate timelines.
India’s draft takes a different path. Publishing rules for GSO players now while deferring NGSO to a separate Cabinet-approved process reflects a sequencing choice — one that prioritises enterprise and broadcasting services in the near term, with consumer broadband to follow once the regulatory groundwork is complete.
But the security provisions apply to everyone
What the draft rules do establish is the principle that a licence alone is not sufficient to start services. Under the rules, companies that have been issued a letter of intent but are still pending applicable security clearance for their equipment installations will only receive spectrum assignment after that clearance is obtained. Satellite companies are also barred from connecting their networks to public telephone networks, including regular mobile networks and internet services, without explicit permission from the central government.
Satya N Gupta, former principal advisor of Trai, told ET that the rules pave the way for satellite services by licensed operators but that further government approval will be required before services can be offered to the public, which may be related to security concerns. Anupam Shrivastava, former CMD of BSNL, said that the rules were a significant help for the state-owned company, allowing it to get spectrum first and handle paperwork later, which would cut down red tape and speed up network rollouts.
The Starlink case
For all the companies waiting to offer satellite broadband to Indian consumers, the unresolved security clearance question is the most immediate obstacle. As things stand in June 2026, Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and the Jio-SES venture all hold the required licences to operate in India. None has launched commercial services.
Starlink’s case is the most visible. The company announced its intention to enter India in November 2022. In May 2025, the DoT issued it a letter of intent. A global mobile personal communication by satellite services licence followed in June 2025, and IN-SPACe, the country’s space regulator, cleared it to operate in July 2025. The trial spectrum was allocated in September 2025.
Business Standard also previously reported that the company has plans to build earth station gateways at nearly a dozen locations across India, including a central hub in Mumbai, and has tied up with various state governments and central agencies including the Unique Identification Authority of India for Aadhaar-based customer verification
And yet security clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the final gate, remains pending.
That concern hardened considerably after reports emerged that Starlink terminals were smuggled into Iran and used during the 2025-26 protests, when Iranian authorities shut down domestic internet access.
According to Bloomberg, there were nearly 50,000 such terminals operating without authorisation in Iran. The episode alarmed Indian security agencies, who are now asking how they can be confident a foreign-controlled satellite network will comply with shutdown orders in a crisis. Bengaluru-based public policy research firm Takshashila Institution noted in a report published in April that Starlink’s willingness to comply with government requests to halt services remains uncertain, and separately flagged the risk of the company leveraging sensitive data from its users.
There is also a corporate governance question. Starlink’s foreign direct investment proposal is pending with the Department of Space, with officials flagging concerns about the structure of the company. Indian rules require government clearance for foreign ownership above 74 per cent. Separately, industry insiders told Business Standard that Starlink’s application continues to lag due to external geopolitical factors, primarily the falling out between Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump. A senior industry executive, speaking without attribution, said, “There is no reason now that India should give any leeway to Starlink; rather it would have to comply with terms and conditions set by the Indian government.”
Eutelsat OneWeb and Orbit Connect India, the Jio-SES venture, face the same security clearance bottleneck, though officials may view them as relatively less concerning compared to a fully foreign-controlled network.
Jio’s play and what it signals
According to CNBC, Jio has submitted a proposal to IN-SPACe for a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites at an altitude of approximately 650 kilometres, designed to offer broadband and direct-to-device connectivity, with deployment expected over the next two to three years. Industry experts told the Economic Times that the investment required could be in the range of $10 to $15 billion, making it one of the largest capital commitments ever considered by an Indian private company. Jio intends to pursue a dual approach in the interim: leasing capacity from existing global satellite operators to offer services faster, while building the domestic constellation over a longer horizon.
People with knowledge of the matter told the Economic Times that the government is expected to support Jio with International Telecommunication Union filings for orbital slot reservations, with that support linked to the entry of an Indian company into what is being treated as a strategic sector.
Satellites as instruments of state
Low earth orbit has become a theatre of strategic competition, and both the US and China have staked their positions aggressively. The way each is approaching it has direct implications for how India handles foreign satellite operators on its soil.
In the US, Starlink has effectively become entangled with American foreign policy. According to a report by Foreign Policy, Starlink is no longer simply a broadband service. A private company is now effectively a gatekeeper in orbit, making decisions about who connects, where, and under what conditions, with consequences that regional governments struggle to replicate or control.
The US military has deepened its ties with SpaceX, recognising the value of LEO satellite networks for secure communications. In early 2025, US negotiators allegedly threatened to limit Ukraine’s access to Starlink if it did not accept a critical minerals deal, according to the Foreign Policy report. The episode illustrated something that governments across the world are now grappling with: when critical communications infrastructure is controlled by a single private company headquartered in one country, every other country that depends on it is, to some degree, dependent on that company’s decisions and that country’s political climate.
The US government has moved to cement Starlink’s domestic and international position. The Federal Communications Commission authorised SpaceX to deploy an additional 7,500 second-generation satellites in January 2026, taking its total approved count to nearly 17,000, with ambitions of eventually reaching 42,000. Federal broadband subsidy programmes in the US are increasingly being reoriented to incorporate satellite connectivity, and SpaceX’s own IPO filing revealed that more than a fifth of its revenue now comes from government contracts, according to Broadband Breakfast.
China’s approach is different but equally deliberate. Rather than backing a single commercial champion, Beijing has pursued a state-coordinated strategy involving multiple entities filing simultaneously for orbital real estate. In the final days of December 2025, Chinese satellite companies submitted filings to the ITU covering more than 200,000 satellites across approximately 14 constellations, SpaceNews reported. The two largest filings alone, designated CTC-1 and CTC-2 and submitted by a newly registered national research institute, each covered nearly 97,000 satellites. Under the ITU’s first-come, first-served rules, early filings confer priority rights over orbital slots and spectrum.
China’s move is understood as securing strategic reserve positions in low earth orbit ahead of actual deployment. A state television explainer quoted in the Beijing Scroll described the filings as “a ticket for strategic reserve.”
Whoever controls the orbital layers above a country has significant leverage over that country’s communications. India understands this clearly. Allowing a foreign-controlled satellite constellation to become the dominant provider of broadband connectivity, particularly one that has demonstrated a willingness to operate in conflict zones and bypass government-ordered shutdowns, is not a risk the government is willing to absorb. The security clearance requirements in the DoT’s draft rules, and the apparent enthusiasm for Jio’s sovereign constellation, follow from the same calculation.
