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Elon Musk has secured a major win in India by signing two back-to-back deals to bring SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet services to the country.
The country’s top telecoms provider Reliance Jio, owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, said on Wednesday it had inked a deal with SpaceX.
“Jio will not only offer Starlink equipment in its retail outlets but will establish a mechanism to support customer service installation and activation,” it said in a statement.
A similar agreement with Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest mobile operator, was announced a day earlier.
Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, said the Musk-owned company looked forward to working with Airtel and Reliance Jio to advance India’s connectivity. Starlink must obtain regulatory approval before proceeding with the deals.
Starlink’s surprising move to enter India through collaborations is “a prudent strategy,” according to Neil Shah, a vice president at Counterpoint Research, a market analysis firm.
“If you want to capture value in the attractive India market, you need to collaborate with local players rather than solely compete,” Shah said. “Both Jio-Airtel and Starlink need each other to drive this market.”
Satellite connectivity remains in its early stage in India, the world’s most populous nation, many of whose rural poor still live in remote or hard-to-connect places. Success in the market, where costs are estimated to be higher than for broadband, will depend on pricing, according to Counterpoint.
Airtel had previously signed a similar collaboration deal with France’s Eutelsat OneWeb, another satellite internet provider that, like Starlink, delivers global coverage through low Earth orbit constellations.
The announcement of the SpaceX deals follows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Musk in Washington, D.C. last month where, according to an X post by Modi, they discussed space, technology and innovation.
Musk has been trying to break into the Indian market for years. His electric vehicle company Tesla has been planning to sell its cars in India since as early as 2017, but kept delaying its launch in the country as efforts to negotiate lower import duties with the local government stalled. Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla had signed a lease for a showroom in Mumbai to sell imported cars.
Musk himself was due to visit India last year but canceled at the last minute, citing his heavy obligations with Tesla. At the time, he was reportedly expected to announce a major investment of at least $2 billion for manufacturing facilities in the country, but the plan never materialized.
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