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In case the government decides to auction the spectrum, these factors should be kept in mind while designing the process, otherwise India could potentially miss out on satellite services, said Mittal, who has historically been against auction of satellite airwaves.
He was speaking to journalists during the launch of Bharti Group-backed OneWeb<\/a>’s satellites by the Indian Space Research Organisation<\/a> (ISRO). Mittal is also the chairman of broadband-from-space company OneWeb.
He said OneWeb’s broadband-from-space services in India will likely start from the middle of 2023. The pricing will be at par with 4G for retail customers, while for enterprises, it will depend on use cases, he said.
The ISRO placed 36 OneWeb satellites into orbit<\/a>. They were launched into space in the space agency’s heaviest rocket so far, Launch Vehicle Mark 3, which took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre<\/a> here after midnight Sunday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a> lauded the launch, tweeting that it exemplified “Atmanirbharta & enhances India’s competitive edge in the global commercial launch service market”.
This is the first launch under the partnership between ISRO’s commercial arm NSIL and OneWeb. The company will pay more than Rs 1,000 crore to NSIL for two launches, the second of which is scheduled for next January.
“We must work with the government to see how it (spectrum) is allocated, whether through administrative mechanism or through auction and if auction, what kind of auction. Auction can’t be on the lines of recently held sale of access spectrum,” Mittal said.
Satellite broadband services<\/a> will help in connecting the unserved in far-flung areas including desert, the Himalayas and oil rigs, but they are not going to make big money, he said.
“It needs to be understood by the decision-makers how satellite spectrum is used. It’s not allocated dedicated to one user, it's shared. And, secondly, it's not like billions of dollars of generation of money. This is not competing with mobile services where you can justify auction. So, if your design of allocation is other than administrative, it has to be designed in a way which works otherwise India will potentially miss out satellite services,” Mittal added.
You can’t have 1,000 MHz at Rs 7,000 crore just to serve two 15-acre spots in the country, the Bharti chairman said.
Besides Bharti Global, OneWeb counts the UK government, Eutelsat, SoftBank, Hughes Networks<\/a> and Hanwha Systems as its major shareholders. OneWeb is in the process of merging the company with French satellite company Eutelsat Communications.
This was OneWeb’s 14th launch, bringing the constellation to 462 satellites. It is planning a fleet of 648 low-earth-orbit satellites that will deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity worldwide.
With only four more launches to go, OneWeb remains on track to activate global coverage in 2023, while its connectivity solutions are already live in regions north of 50 degrees latitude.