Tata Group’s Nelco in talks with Telesat for satellite broadband services in India

Tata Group company Nelco is in advanced talks with Canadian company Telesat to launch fast satellite broadband services in India. Telesat’s Lightspeed brand will put it in direct competition with Bharti Airtel-backed OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Nelco and Telesat will have a master services agreement to provide Lightspeed LEO (low-earth orbit) satellite services in India. Nelco Managing Director PJ Nath told The Economic Times, “We are in the process of finalising details of the commercial arrangements.” There will be no separate joint venture company with Telesat.

Like Telesat, OneWeb, Amazon and SpaceX are all aiming to enter India’s satellite services segment. The Canadian company proposes to offer satellite broadband services on the Ka-band or 28 GHz band globally.

India is seen as a key satellite market as around 75 per cent of rural India is devoid of access to broadband, cellular or fibre connectivity. LEO satellites are then seen as a viable alternative.

The Canadian company plans to invest almost $8 billion to build a global constellation of around 298-odd LEO satellites. It aims to launch the Lightspeed satellite internet services in India by 2024. OneWeb and SpaceX are aiming to start internet operations by next year.

The Tata-Telesat company, like OneWeb, is planning to offer bandwidth capacity to operators. Nath said that their focus segment is B2B, and main markets would be cellular backhauls/mobility, remote village connectivity and meeting enterprise needs for reliable connectivity.

The company is planning to put in an application for statutory approvals after the new Spacecom policy clarifies the rules on setting up satellite gateways by overseas non-geostationary satellite system operators or LEO satellite service providers.

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