The Great Indian Space (Internet) Race

For every satcom operator involved, India is a gold mine. The second largest telecom market in the world has targets to achieve - becoming a trillion-dollar digital economy is one of them. Satcom in India might be the solution to India's deep-rooted connectivity issues. Therefore, the fact that there are multiple satcom operators looking at the country with a comical dollar sign in their eyes becomes obvious.

India needs satcom, now more than ever. And likewise, satellite makers needs India, to flourish in an industry that might one day evolve into an interplanetary network. The race is well and truly on in India's space internet space (all puns intended), and only time will tell who comes out on top. For now, here is a comparison between all the companies that are interested.

The list is stacked, and it includes veterans like Viasat and Hughes, and upstarts like Starlink, OneWeb and Project Kuiper.

Starlink - The Space Internet Champion

Starlink will change the way the world does telecom and networking - or so it thinks it will. There are a lot of things going for it to achieve that. First, the sheer numbers it will have in orbit. Starlink is planning to put up more than 11,000 satellites in orbit. For context, ESA estimates that there have been around 4,000 satellites in orbit since forever.

Second, once it is up and running, since it is so close to Earth, it will achieve regular latency of around 20 ms, maybe even lower. This might not sound much right now; after all, terrestrial networks have achieved latencies of around 1 ms. However, it implies that Starlink is capable of delivering normal connectivity. The reason that is important is because almost all of Starlink's competitors come with caveats.

Elon and SpaceX have plans to upscale (!) the existing Starlink plans to extend the same all the way to Mars. Elon's love for Mars has been an open secret for years now. To that regard, they have planned an interplanetary constellation consisting around 42,000 satellites.

Starlink uses a flat user terminal to deliver connectivity. The user terminal will have a phased antenna, that will track the satellites via motors. So, as long as the dish is looking at the sky, it can receive signals. The user terminal is quite portable, however, there's a catch. Every Starlink connection is associated with one cell, which is a geographical area served by one satellite. What's more, if the person moves the user terminal out of their designated cell, they will stop receiving internet. If Starlink can sort this one major caveat out, then it would become a truly portable connectivity solution.

OneWeb - An Anglo-Indian Venture to Challenge in Satcom

OneWeb is a key player in satcom in India. A joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and the British government, the company became the first satcom player to actually apply for a license back in June. However, it remains abundantly clear that no one else is going  to achieve the scale that SpaceX is aiming for. To tackle that, OneWeb's primary focus remains delivering connectivity to underserved and unserved areas.

OneWeb has planned 648 satellites in LEO, going around the planet and covering virtually all of it. However, the key difference between this and Starlink is that OneWeb's satellites orbit at around 1200 km above the surface of the Earth. In contrast, Starlink's satellites are orbiting at half that distance.

However, being at that distance plays in OneWeb's favor - it does not loses as much latency, while also having to put up far less satellites in orbit. It also will allow OneWeb to cover the planet faster than Starlink, in theory at least. OneWeb has said that it will complete global coverage by 2024.

A rule of thumb - the further out your satellites orbit, the more of them you'll have to put up to cover the Earth. It is a simple case of how much of the surface the satellite can see - the closer it is, the less it'll see and the less it'll cover.

OneWeb recently had put up 36 more satellites, marking its satellite deployment half done. More importantly, it achieved coverage from 50 degree North and up.

Both the companies are targeting similar deadlines for global and India launch; September this year and June the next, respectively. It looks like OneWeb might just about edge Starlink at early customer capture.

Kuiper Systems - Amazon's Foray into Space

Jeff Bezos is looking at the space as a great commercial opportunity. And rightly so; the final frontier literally has infinite possibilities. Apart from his rocket manufacturing company Blue Origin, Bezos' Amazon has set aside $10 billion for the satellite constellation.

The constellation will consist of 3,236 satellites across the LEO orbits. This level of deployment makes it the third largest planned satellite constellation, after Starlink's 11,000 and Samsung's 6,000. However, the internet giant is still lagging behind Starlink and OneWeb in terms of actual deployment; it hasn't started it yet. Amazon feels confident about their venture, though.

During a talk with TechCrunch, Dave Limp, Senior VP at Amazon and incharge of Project Kuiper, said "My view, and Amazon’s view, is the more constellations, the better. This is hard, and no one constellation is going to serve the number of unserved people out there today". Amazon also has an edge over the rest of its competition in form of Amazon Web Services, its cloud venture. AWS is the source of Amazon's confidence in Kuiper Systems; the cloud solutions that the former can provide are world class. Pair that with Kuiper's connectivity and you've got a networking solution capable of going against anyone.

Amazon might be late to the scene, but it is coming all guns blazing. There are no deadlines for a commercial launch; however, the company had started looking for launch vehicles in late 2020. By April 2021, Kuiper Systems team had settled on Atlas V, though they might even consider SpaceX's Starship - the behemoth capable of launching 200 satellites in one go.

As far as Project Kuiper goes, it sure will blast off on the space internet scene.

Hughes and Viasat - The Geosat Veterans

These two companies have been in the space internet segment far before SpaceX, OneWeb or Kuiper Systems. Not only that, Hughes and Viasat have been in the business for longer than these companies have existed.

Hughes' first satellite, the Safeway 3, launched back in 2007, while Viasat 1 was launched 4 years later, in 2011. Since then, both the companies have achieved global coverage. Normally, only 3 geostationary satellites are enough to cover the Earth. A satellite broadcasting DTH can cover entire continents - it is a one-way traffic. On the other hand, for satcom, the satellite has to send and receive data. For that to happen, the satellite has to focus its transmission over a relatively smaller area, like a country. Hence, there are usually more than 3 satellites.

Both of these companies are established names in the satcom industry - given that they are among the pioneers. With regard to their satellite capabilities, Hughes is definitely ahead of Viasat. The former has a satellite network of 34 satellites, while the latter has only 5. However, both of the companies have been providing satellite internet as a service in and around North America for years now.

One limitation that both of these companies face is the latency. Since the satellites orbit around 36,000 kilometers away from Earth, the latency remains around 270 ms for a one-way trip, and around 540 ms for a round trip. That means, you definitely can't use this network for online gaming. Or any other mission-critical application.

Both the companies have already made their moves in India - Hughes has a proposal on hold since 2016, and Viasat had applied for government permission to start services. Hughes and Viasat both see satcom in India as more of an enterprise business than a consumer one. The companies will  most likely target government projects for delivering connectivity in underserved regions and cellular backhaul.

India's Spacecom Policy - A Work in Progress

The Indian government has been proactive in facilitating satcom in India. Recently, the DCC, the highest decision making body of the telecom department, has scrapped having to take license to provide cellular backhaul. This is only one in a series of policy changes India is making to facilitating the entry of satcom players.

In May, TRAI had suggested DoT to lower spectrum usage charges for satcom players from 4% to 1%. DoT is yet to take a decision on that, but it is a positive development nevertheless. India is working on a new Spacecom policy, which is expected to make it easier for satellite companies to enter satcom in India.

On 7th July, news came in that DoT Secretary Anshu Prakash is set to hold crunch talks with key satcom players and telco to discuss policy. As previously mentioned, satcom in India might solve its deep-rooted connectivity issues. Industry bodies such as SIA-India have lobbied to make policy favorable, and for good reason. Satcom has the potential to soon become the core of networking and connectivity.

Since none of the companies discussed here are based in India - though many of them have offices here - it means that policy becomes even more important. A good, liberating policy framework is what satcom players require to operate at the full potential.

Satcom in India - A Consumer and an Enterprise Opportunity

In the country, like any other country, connectivity from space can become both a consumer and an enterprise opportunity. Veterans like Hughes and Viasat have experience in both, and the new players have capacity of both, too. First, enterprise opportunity in satcom in India might prove a far regular revenue stream for satcom players than the consumer opportunity.

The biggest enterprise business is that of providing backhaul to cellular sites. Up until fairly recently, any satcom player in India had to acquire National Long Distance, or NLD, license to do so. However, the government has scrapped that. Furthermore, the satcom players also had to acquire the same license to install ground stations.

This means that not only the satcom companies can now install ground stations to better amplify and distribute their bandwidth, they can also provide backhaul. Viasat and Hughes are already doing this for telcos in North America, connecting far-flung regions of the continent. Starlink and OneWeb have also publicly stated that they can provide backhaul. This makes all of the players with backhaul capabilities.

Telcos and satcom companies can develop more synergies than just backhauling cellular networks. Delivering connectivity directly to the end-user will get data closer to the edge. This will increase the importance of edge and, therefore, cloud computing in general. More and more telcos are looking at cloud networking solutions such as Open RAN and vRAN for 5G and other deployments. This will allow the telcos to harness the data at the edge of networks for analytics and related applications.

The consumer opportunity is pretty straightforward, however. It will involve similar processes as of a DTH connection, however, it won't come as cheap. Right now, Starlink's pre-booking price stands at ₹7,500 - so it is not something everyone can afford.

Will Satcom in India be Affordable?

For the time being, we can't be sure of that - no company has properly announced their data plans for satcom in India. One calculation on a NASA Spaceflight Forum by the user Robotbeat discussed how much will Starlink cost in the US. Google can also do the calculation for you.

Basically, Robotbeat took into account costs associated, such as cost per kilo of satellite hardware and the lifetime of the satellite. Here is the complete calculation done by them:

((cost per kg of satellite hardware)+(cost per kg launch to operational orbit))/((Capacity factor)*(throughput per kg of satellite hardware)*(satellite lifetime))

For a globally available Starlink constellation (cap factor = 25%) launched with Falcon 9 for $1000/kg with a satellite hardware cost of $1000/kg, 2.5GB/s for each 250kg satellite (0.01GB/s/kg), 6.34 year lifetime (200 million seconds):

($1000/kg+$1000/kg)/(.25*.001GB/(s*kg)*2*10^8s) in $/GB = 0.4 cents per GB.

For the early days (when only 4% capacity factor is feasible, and using the more realistic $30 million per Falcon 9 launch instead of the $15 million) is:

($2000/kg+$2000/kg)/(.04*(17Gbps/(263kg))*4 years)  in $/GB

=10 cents per GB.

What's more, by using Starship instead of Falcon 9, they can bring the costs down even further. This can see Starlink per GB costs slide down to as low as 0.01 cents/GB. This is still ignoring the increase in data throughput capacity that will come from Moore's Law.

Moore's law is the principle that the speed and capability of computers can be expected to double every two years, as a result of increases in the number of transistors a microchip can contain.

Even if Moore's law fails in the near future, this still will put Starlink costs far below anything we have on Earth. For comparison, in India, the mobile data costs stand at 68 cents per GB. This is still far, far below the global average. However, if Starlink achieves the ideal scenario, like the one just described, this figure becomes 6800 times what that will cost.

Long story short - satcom in India will be affordable to use, but slightly expensive to buy in the first place.

A Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity

Satellite internet remains uncharted territory for India. The concept is radical, and the policy framework is still a work in progress. However, given the sheer size of the Indian telecom market - 1.2 billion strong, satcom companies just can't let the opportunity pass. India should use this attraction as a factor to lower user terminal costs - even provide subsidies, like Germany did. Early market capture can benefit the companies, and the government's nudge can allow for a better overall implementation in the country.

On the enterprise front, the government has already allowed these companies to provide backhaul without the need of a special license for that. All that needs to be done now is finalize a proper Spacecom policy and invite companies to join the Indian satcom space.

In short, satcom needs India, and India needs satcom. The final frontier holds infinite possibilities, and not just for cosmic adventures. It can also help make things better closer to home.