Starlink yet to unveil India pricing, working to secure final govt approval

Experts say tariff for Indian residential users not aimed at mass market, unlikely to impact telcos

India pricing for Starlink's services is yet to be announced, the US-based satellite communications provider said late Monday night after its website showed monthly tariffs of Rs 8,600 and equipment cost of Rs 34,000, earlier in the day. The company clarified that the pricing was visible due to a configuration glitch and did not reflect accurate data. 

 

"The Starlink India website is not live, service pricing for customers in India has not yet been announced, and we are not taking orders from customers in India. There was a config glitch that briefly made dummy test data visible, but those numbers do not reflect what the cost of Starlink service will be in India. The glitch was quickly fixed," said Lauren Dreyer, vice president of Starlink Business Operations in a post on X. 

 

"We're eager to connect the people of India with Starlink's high-speed internet, and our teams are focused on obtaining final government approvals to turn service (and the website) on," she added. 

 

The Elon Musk owned satcom services provider is learnt to be building earth stations across multiple locations in the country and is hiring key executives to begin India operations. 

 

 

While India still awaits the official tariff plans, as per Starlink’s website, monthly plans in neighbouring countries of Bangladesh are at $40-50 (~3,400–4,300) and equipment costs $300-400 (~25,800-34,400), lower than Sri Lanka’s, which stand at $100-125 (~8,600–10,750) per month with equipment priced at $900–1,000 (~77,400-86,000). Download speeds range between 190-360 Mbps.

 

Musk, in a recent conversation with Zerodha Co-founder Nikhil Kamath, said Starlink would complement existing telecom operators because its low-earth-orbit network cannot cater to densely populated areas. Rural and remote regions, he said, stood to benefit the most. “In cities, you’ve got these cell towers that are only a kilometre apart. But cell towers tend to be inefficient in the countryside. So, in rural areas is where you tend to have the worst internet because it’s very expensive and difficult to lay all the fiber-optic cables or to have high-bandwidth cellular towers. So, Starlink is very complementary to the existing telecom companies,” Musk said.

 

Telcos have maintained that competition will persist and that Starlink will challenge terrestrial 5G and fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband, potentially undermining their business cases.

 

Starlink has recieved approvals from the Indian space regulator in July to begin commercial operations, allowing it to compete with Jio-SES and Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb, once the companies begin commercial services.

 

All three companies await decisions on satellite spectrum pricing and allocation, which remain under discussion between the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), following the completion of security tests and trials. Starlink will also need to set up multiple gateway earth stations to relay signals between satellites and user terminals.

 

Airtel and Jio have distribution tie-ups with SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, enabling the carriers to sell Starlink’s services through their retail networks.