 "Mathew Oommen")
Satellites have evolved from being a vanilla backhaul system to becoming a base station in the sky and the co-existence of satellite communications with other mobile technologies is now a reality, Reliance Jio President Mathew Oommen has said.
Speaking to the press on the sidelines of the seventh India Mobile Congress (IMC), he said Reliance Jio, moving beyond traditional terrestrial spectrum, had become a non-terrestrial network player and was way ahead of competition.
While satellites have historically been used for backhaul services, satellite spectrum has begun serving the same devices and customers as that of terrestrial spectrum over the past two years, Oommen pointed out.
Satellite spectrum, or orbit spectrum, is a segment of radio spectrum made available when satellites are placed into orbit. A debate over whether the scarce resource should be auctioned or allocated by the government has split the telecom industry.
As part of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai’s) last consultation process in June, tech firms like Elon Musk’s Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Telesat, Tata Group’s Nelco, and Hughes had been united in their opposition to the auctioning of satcom spectrum.
In contrast, telecom operators remained divided. Bharti Enterprises has pushed for allocation while Reliance Jio wants auction.
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“If it (satellite spectrum) is the same type of service, going to the same devices and the same customers, and using the same standards, should there be a different spectrum policy? My answer is ‘no’,” Oommen said.
On the issue of there being no global precedent of a nation auctioning satellite spectrum, he said the United Arab Emirates had recently auctioned it while Thailand did so for orbital slots.
“We as a nation are the most spectrum-deprived, and just because somebody didn’t do something, that doesn’t mean it needs to be applicable for us. We need to do what is right for us. We are no longer a Tier-II nation and can’t have a regressive policy to be applied to a progressive technology,” he said. To questions on how Jio planned to provide affordable satcom services to remote areas, he said the vast sums in the government’s Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund should be given to telcos to be used for further investment.
“If we want to drive the Digital India vision, we should take that and put it to use,” he said.
The government imposes a universal access levy on telecom service providers of 5 per cent of their annual adjusted gross revenues. That goes to the Telecom Department’s USO fund, which had an unused surplus of Rs 75,689 crore as of June 30, 2023, the official data shows.
The fund should be leveraged for not just putting up towers but also giving subsidies to Indians who can’t afford the transition, Oommen said.
Satcom race hotting up
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has granted Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance Jio’s satellite arm Jio Space the licence for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite Services (GMPCS). The licence is needed to offer satellite-based broadband service in India.
Both companies are now facing off in the segment, with Jio successfully demonstrating at the IMC its Jio SpaceFiber service, India’s first satellite-based gigabit speed broadband service to previously inaccessible geographies in the country.
Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said Bharti Airtel-backed Eutelsat OneWeb’s satellite communication service would be available in India from next month.
Oommen said the satellites of Luxembourg-based satellite telecommunications network provider SES, leveraged by JioSpaceFiber, would give the company an edge.
Eutelsat OneWeb, created last month through a merger between OneWeb and French satellite operator Eutelsat Communications, is banking on a combination of GEO-LEO fleet of satellites.
However, Oommen said unlike the hundreds of satellites needed by LEO systems to cover the earth, Jio would require eight-nine MEO satellites to cover the earth, he said.
