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Can Starlink Finally Crack India? Who Stands to Gain?

Some 670 million of India’s 1.4 billion people – about 48% of the population – don’t have access to the internet, according to a 2024 report by GSMA, a trade body for mobile network operators worldwide.Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

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By Alisha Sachdev

March 24, 2025 at 11:19 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

India’s two major telecom operators signed separate deals with Elon Musk’s spaceflight company SpaceX in mid-March in a move that could signal his satellite internet network Starlink is one step closer to gaining entry to the South Asian country and its population of some 1.44 billion people.

The collaborations represented about-turns for the billionaire owners of India’s two largest telecommunications companies, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd, who had vocally opposed Starlink’s gaining access to India just months earlier. Starlink has been seeking a license to operate in the country since 2021.