The Indian satellite communication space is set to become even more competitive with the anticipated entry of Canada's Telesat in partnership with Tata Group's Nelco.

Elon Musk's SpaceX, along with several other satellite firms, including Bharti Airtel's OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper, have entered the Indian satellite space recently.

The Telesat-Nelco collaboration is likely to start commercial satellite services by 2024, according to media reports.

Figure 1: Join the queue: The race for space in India is hotting up.
(Source: NASA)

Telesat would be providing services to the business-to-business segment, specifically large businesses. The two companies are in talks with the government to procure the required permissions, and are in the midst of formulating market strategy, according to media reports.

Telesat plans to invest around $5 billion to set up a constellation of around 300 low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of Indian businesses. Affordable connectivity is a key requirement for Indian enterprises, and the Telesat-Nelco partnership hopes to address this.

Interestingly, Tata Group recently decided to revive Tata Teleservices with a focus on the enterprise segment, specifically SMEs.

However, Telesat-Nelco seems to be somewhat behind other satellite service providers. SpaceX has already launched the beta version of its services, and OneWeb is set to launch in 2022.

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Both firms have adopted a different business model. SpaceX is offering services directly to consumers while OneWeb is focusing only on the communications service provider (CSP) space.

It's been reported SpaceX will operate in ten rural Lok Sabha (lower house) parliamentary constituencies for 80% of the terminals shipped to India. The company is targeting 200,000 active connections in India by December 2022. However, with initial sign up costing $99, this might be on the high side in a country with an average revenue per user of less than $2 per month.

Almost 50% of India's population is yet to be connected. Affordable satellite services hope to address this segment. Especially as the lack of fiber network makes it challenging for service providers to address the needs of the country's growing digital economy.

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— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading