As the India Mobile Congress opened its tenth edition at Yashobhoomi in New Delhi on October 7, under the theme “Scale Without Boundaries”, Elon Musk offered his own commentary on India’s telecom sector.
In a post on X, he alleged that “certain oligarchs” were blocking Starlink to protect their “monopolistic chokehold” on Indians, and called it “a crime against the people of India”. In a second post he said Starlink beams were turned off over India.
The Ministry of Communications replied the next day, calling the suggestion that India’s satellite regulation is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived”. It said the security assessment is under way for all three licensed non-geostationary satellite operators, that they stand at broadly the same regulatory stage, and that spectrum can be assigned only after that assessment is complete.
In a week when India’s telecom ambitions are on public display, the exchange deserves more than a reading as a spat between a billionaire and a regulator.
The record does not support the charge
Musk named no one, adding only “You can guess who they are”. The competitive landscape makes the guess easy. Bharti is a major shareholder in Eutelsat OneWeb, and Jio runs its satellite venture with SES. The two largest terrestrial operators are therefore also Starlink’s direct competitors in satellite broadband.
Yet the policy record cuts the other way. In October 2024, when Jio argued that satellite spectrum should be auctioned, the government chose administrative allocation, the model Starlink had sought. In March 2025, Airtel and Jio each signed agreements with SpaceX to distribute Starlink services in India. The government has also moved ahead with the framework for satellite spectrum charges.
On commercial terms, the state’s decisions have so far gone largely in Starlink’s favour. What remains is security clearance, and that is precisely where the government should not be hurried.
Why India matters to Starlink
SpaceX reported 12 million Starlink subscribers at the end of June 2026, twice the figure of a year earlier. A satellite constellation earns its return by spreading fixed costs over more users, and India offers a scale that few markets can match. TRAI’s latest monthly data, released on September 28, show 1,360.70 million telecom subscriptions and 1,101.21 million broadband connections at the end of August 2026.
The divide beneath those totals persists. TRAI’s most recent internet density figures, for March 2026, record 48.31 internet subscriptions per 100 people in rural India against 126.80 in urban areas. Starlink has built more than 20 gateway sites in India even before commercial services have begun, an indication of how seriously it values the market.
The larger prize lies ahead. Starlink’s application for its second-generation constellation of nearly 30,000 satellites includes direct-to-device capability, which allows an ordinary smartphone to connect to a satellite without a terrestrial tower. With direct-to-device service, a satellite operator could cease to be a niche broadband supplier and become a competitor to mobile networks themselves. Musk’s urgency is commercially rational.
The view from India’s security architecture
A satellite network creates communication pathways that bypass terrestrial infrastructure. The network is global, while jurisdiction remains national. A link from an Indian user to a satellite and onward to an overseas destination raises questions of authentication, visibility, interception and control that terrestrial licensing was never designed to answer.
Indian agencies have already recovered Starlink terminals during operations in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and in Manipur, though Musk has consistently maintained that service over India was switched off.
The security conditions issued by the Department of Telecommunications in May 2025 address much of this in principle. Key functions of the Network Control and Monitoring Centre, including lawful interception, terminal control and traffic routing, must be located in India.
Indian terminals may not connect through gateways abroad, interception must integrate with the Centralised Monitoring System, and operators must be able to deny service to individuals or areas during hostilities. Starlink says its Indian design meets these requirements. The ongoing assessment must verify this in practice, because these conditions are only as strong as the ability to audit them.
Reliability under stress is the further concern. In 2022, Musk declined a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink coverage for an operation near Crimea, a decision he later confirmed publicly. The episode showed that decisions taken by the owner of a privately controlled constellation can have direct operational consequences for a state. India’s planning for conflict, internal security crises and disasters must ensure that, in such moments, India’s national interest prevails over that of any operator.
The border and the coastline
Direct-to-device service sharpens the problem most at India’s edges. The DoT conditions anticipate part of it. Licensees must support special monitoring zones extending 50 km inside land and coastal borders and out to the Exclusive Economic Zone, geofence debarred areas accurately, and reshape satellite footprints near borders to prevent signal spillover. These obligations bind operators licensed in India. They do not bind a service licensed next door.
A satellite beam does not stop at a boundary pillar. Starlink already operates in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. Once direct-to-device service is offered in a neighbouring country through that country’s operators and gateways, an ordinary smartphone carried along the International Border, the Line of Control or the Line of Actual Control, or aboard a vessel in India’s territorial waters, could, depending on spectrum, device and roaming arrangements, connect to a foreign satellite and route its traffic through a foreign gateway, outside Indian lawful interception.
China’s Tiantong geostationary system already supports satellite calling on certain Chinese smartphones, and Chinese low earth orbit constellations are being built with wider ambitions. A Starlink dish recovered in a Manipur raid is at least visible. A direct-to-device handset is indistinguishable from any other phone. The methamphetamine consignment seized near the Andaman Islands in 2024, whose smugglers reportedly navigated with a Starlink terminal, showed that India’s maritime approaches are already being tested.
Licensing alone cannot close this gap. Type approval for handsets sold in India should require that their satellite mode connect only to services authorised in India. Spectrum monitoring by the Wireless Monitoring Organisation, the Army, the border guarding forces and the Coast Guard must be equipped to detect satellite uplinks from handsets and not only from dishes.
Spillover limits for foreign-licensed direct-to-device services along India’s borders should be pursued with neighbouring regulators and at the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2027, where direct-to-device spectrum is on the agenda. With hostile states no such restraint can be assumed, and detection and denial capability must be planned on that basis.
What India should seek in return
India should welcome Starlink on the same terms as OneWeb and Jio-SES, neither favoured for its founder’s influence nor penalised for being foreign. Openness should come with clear expectations.
Beyond a domestically located control centre and assured interception, India can reasonably seek manufacture of user terminals in India, integration of NavIC for positioning, and a binding protocol for service continuity and suspension during national emergencies. Direct-to-device service also needs a settled domestic policy before any operator offers it, covering spectrum coordination with terrestrial operators and the boundary between telecom and space regulation.
These expectations would also serve India’s own space industry, now being built by private launch firms, satellite start-ups and operators alongside ISRO and IN-SPACe, if foreign entry is tied to local capability in ground infrastructure, encryption, space situational awareness and secure communications.
Openness without dependence
The government’s response to Musk was correct in substance. A predictable, transparent and technology-neutral process will answer his criticism better than any exchange on social media. The governing principle is simple. India should be open to Starlink, but it should never become dependent on Starlink.
As IMC 2026 celebrates scale without boundaries, the test for policy is whether India gains connectivity, competition and domestic capability while retaining full sovereign control over the networks that carry its communications.
(The author is a former National Cyber Security Coordinator and a former Signal Officer-in-Chief of the Indian Army. Views expressed are personal.)
