The environment for satellite communication services and satellite broadband is heating up in India as well. In this race, there are obvious names like OneWeb and Starlink, but from India, the top name happens to be Nelco which is a Tata Group company. To launch satellite services providing communication services like the other companies, Nelco has partnered up with the Canadian firm Telesat. Last we heard, both the companies were working on the details of the deal and now it appears that both Nelco and Telesat have worked out the deal to finally ink the partnership. Nelco has also clarified that it has not decided to set up a separate venture for this deal. PJ Nath, Managing Director of Nelco, said that Nelco and Telesat will have an MSA (master services agreement) for offering LEO (low-earth-orbit) satellite services.
Satellite Broadband Market Expected to Grow Manifold
For the unaware, satellite communication of this nature requires launching Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites which form a cluster around 100-200 km away from the earth surface thus staying close, travelling at a very high speed and providing communication services using a cluster of such satellites. Recently, in a new report, Starlink appears to have pegged impressive download and upload speeds on Ookla’s speed tests which are almost comparable to fixed broadband services. Also, in a new release, ICRA had noted that the market in satellite broadband is slated to grow to 2 million users by 2025 with the total financial market for the services to be around Rs 6,000 crore by the same year.
Tata Group Company to Focus on B2B Business
Since the launch of such services requires multiple satellites in clusters, hence the cost of even a single such broadband connection is expected to be twice as much as a normal fibre connection. Thus, Nelco and Telesat in this partnership would not only focus on the consumer business but would also be marketing their services to businesses as well. As per Nath, the focus would be on trying to reduce the costs for the satellite access terminals.
