Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, India’s No. 2 mobile carrier, said Elon Musk’s Starlink is free to sell satellite internet in India on one condition: the power to switch it off must stay with Indian authorities. He made the remarks to Indian broadcaster NDTV on November 13, in comments reported by Yahoo Finance, which carried a story first published by BeInCrypto.
Key facts
- “The kill switch has to be in India. The control has to be in India,” Mittal told NDTV, per Yahoo Finance, while calling Starlink selling in India “all right.”
- Mittal said Musk seems impatient and frustrated. His group backs OneWeb, a Starlink rival that is also still waiting for Indian approval.
- India’s Cabinet must still set the spectrum fee and the Home Ministry must clear each operator. Until then, nobody sells.
- Jio Platforms was trading near ₹1,400 on November 13, above the price at which it listed on October 28.
- Jio holds 42.6% of India’s fixed lines and 77.5% of its 5G home wireless, according to Yahoo Finance — the overlap where Starlink would compete.
Why it matters
Mittal is the second Indian telecom billionaire in a month to be pulled into a public fight over Starlink’s entry, Yahoo Finance reports. His intervention shifts the argument from who is blocking whom to what conditions a satellite operator must accept, and it names a specific technical feature of Starlink’s network as the sticking point. Conditions of this kind are not unique to India: in South Africa, Starlink’s entry is held up by a court challenge to ICASA’s 30% ownership rule.
The laser design at the centre of the dispute
Yahoo Finance, citing Tech Insider, reports that Starlink satellites pass data to one another by laser, so traffic can move between spacecraft rather than down to a gateway inside a given country, and that India’s security rules clash with that design. Mittal, according to Yahoo Finance, said OneWeb has no such satellite-to-satellite links and therefore routes traffic through ground infrastructure.
His demand for a local off switch arrives alongside a separate Starlink slowdown row. Yahoo Finance reports that Starshield, SpaceX’s military version of Starlink, was slowed from October 14 to 24 in Ukraine, according to United24. India Today reports that the Wall Street Journal said Musk ordered the slowdown of Ukraine’s military-grade Starlink without warning Kyiv, disrupting drone missions and sharpening scrutiny of the company during its India launch row; Musk has since admitted SpaceX throttled the service over Ukraine.
The price question
Neither SpaceX nor the Indian government has published a price for Starlink in India, and none appears in the sources for this story. The only figure on the table is Mittal’s own comparison: Yahoo Finance reports that in October he questioned demand, saying Indians get 5G almost anywhere for about $3 a month, and asked why anyone would pay ten times more for a satellite connection. On that arithmetic he is assuming a satellite tariff of roughly $30 a month — the cost objection he expects to sink Starlink’s consumer case before the regulatory one is settled.
Jio’s listing and the broadband prize
Jio Platforms, the telecom and digital arm of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, made its Mumbai debut on October 28 and rose 21% on the day, The Straits Times reported. The same report says the offering raised about $3.2 billion, India’s biggest ever, and that the stock opened at ₹1,358 against the ₹1,119 ($11.68) offer price. That open valued Jio at about $131.52 billion and made it India’s second-largest listed company by market capitalisation, ahead of Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank, according to The Straits Times.
The Straits Times also reports that Jio’s telecoms business serves more than 530 million customers and is backed by Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google, and that several brokerages called the valuation attractive while flagging competition, heavy capital spending and changes to India’s telecom rules on spectrum, licensing and fees as risks.
How the row started
Billionaires.africa reported in mid-October that Musk had spent more than a week attacking Ambani on X over the delayed launch, at one point addressing him as “Prime Minister Ambani” and accusing Reliance of protecting its telecom business from competition. Reliance has not publicly responded, the outlet said.
The two accounts of India’s position differ in emphasis. Yahoo Finance reports that India denies bias and says Starlink filed its security papers last. Billionaires.africa reports that the Ministry of Communications rejected Musk’s claims of regulatory interference and said the licensed applicants were at broadly the same stage of security assessment before spectrum is assigned. India Today notes that Indian-American journalist Fareed Zakaria called Musk’s remarks ill-timed, and that AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi questioned the “real boss of India” comment.
What happens next
Neither the Cabinet’s spectrum fee nor the Home Ministry’s operator clearances has a public date in the sources. Until both land, Yahoo Finance reports, no satellite operator — Starlink or OneWeb — can take an Indian customer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can anyone in India buy a Starlink dish today?
No. Yahoo Finance reports that no satellite operator has been assigned spectrum, so Starlink cannot sell even a single dish against Jio’s broadband products until it is cleared.
Which other satellite operators are waiting for Indian clearance?
Billionaires.africa reports that Starlink is one of three licensed satellite operators in the queue, the others including Jio’s joint venture with Luxembourg-based satellite firm SES.
Has Mittal taken swipes at Musk before?
Yes. India Today reports that Mittal claimed Airtel is ahead of Starlink in India’s satellite internet approval queue, and Yahoo Finance reports he said in October he would be happy to win approval a few days before Musk.
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