How Musk’s Starlink turned from rival to partner for Jio, Airtel

medium119006977Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communications company, fought behind the scenes for months to break into India’s internet business. The market is dominated by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which seemed united in trying to keep Starlink out.Then, suddenly, this week each of them announced a partnership to bring Starlink into India, pending the government’s approval.Jio said on March 11 that it would team up with Starlink “to deliver reliable broadband services across the country, including in the most remote and rural regions”. Hours earlier, Airtel had celebrated a deal in similar terms.The support of two of India’s most influential tycoons, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance and Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel, was a breakthrough for Musk, whose businesses have tried for years to gain access to India.Gwynne Shotwell, the president of SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, said in a statement accompanying Jio’s announcement that she looked forward to “receiving authorisation from the government of India to provide more people, organisations and businesses with access to Starlink’s high-speed internet services”.Airtel noted that its partnership would be “subject to SpaceX receiving its own authorisations”. With local partners that hold the government’s ear, Starlink’s odds look stronger.As Musk stands side by side with President Donald Trump, trying to aggressively shrink the US government, his business dealings around the world have become even more prominent. In India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to placate Trump to avoid tariffs, Musk’s long struggle to crack the market for his car company, Tesla, has attracted a lot of attention. But Starlink could be a bigger prize.Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit satellites swarm the globe, making it possible to beam internet services to the surface at broadband quality. Where ground-based internet is patchy, as in rural parts of India, Starlink sees an opportunity.Ambani’s Jio, the world’s biggest provider of mobile data, has 500mn subscribers. But for generations, foreign companies have found it impossible to challenge the Ambani family on its home turf.With Trump’s election, and Musk’s proximity to power in Washington, new arrangements seem possible. medium nocaptionhttp://youtu.be/0w3366-mWGI?si=AbT5xbkYDe2xbzVPIndia’s business and political leaders have held a flurry of closed-door meetings with Trump’s inner circle. Ambani attended one of Trump’s inauguration parties in January, and Modi was photographed having a chummy meeting with Musk in Washington last month. Commerce minister Piyush Goyal spent last week in Washington, and Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, is due in New Delhi next week.In India, Starlink has been fighting two battles simultaneously. The first is against India’s firm sense of national security. To qualify for a communications licence, foreign companies need to pass a gantlet of regulatory tests. Starlink briefly took preorders in India in 2021, drawing an angry response from the telecom ministry, which told it to quit selling until it got government approval, now under review.The other battle pitted the world’s richest person, Musk, against Asia’s richest person, Ambani. The Jio owner had teamed up with Airtel, normally a fierce competitor, to argue that rights to beam the internet to India should be sold by the government at auction. Starlink wanted to avoid a bidding war, which would force it to outspend companies that had already staked big bets on the Indian market.Nikhil Pahwa, the founder of MediaNama, which provides analysis of India’s technology policy, said it was unclear whether Starlink would compete directly with the two Indian telecoms giants or only serve them. That matters, because “there’s lack of competition in the Indian market for internet access”, he said. Mobile data is cheaper in India than anywhere in the world, at just ₹12 per gigabyte, but “if Starlink doesn’t offer its own services, this only entrenches the duopoly of Airtel and Jio”, he said.In either case, Starlink stands to corner the market in satellite-based internet in India. Both Airtel and Jio had begun investing in alternative systems, developed at great expense with European partners, but could decide to rely exclusively on Starlink instead.Others worry about different kinds of vulnerability, such as Musk’s ability to use Starlink as an instrument of geopolitics. Starlink’s services have been restricted multiple times in Ukraine during the war there.Last week, Musk had an ill-tempered exchange on social media with Poland’s foreign minister, who said that if Starlink proved an “unreliable provider” in Ukraine, the country’s allies would look for other suppliers. Musk responded sharply — “Be quiet, small man” — and added that he would never switch off its services in Ukraine, because “without Starlink, the Ukrainian lines would collapse”.After the deals with Jio and Airtel were announced, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh asked in a post: “Who will have the power to switch connectivity on or off when national security demands it? Will it be Starlink or its Indian partners?” medium118937556 medium118937580 medium118937607 medium118937622