Starlink, Airtel and Jio: A trifecta to transform India’s digital future

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India’s biggest telecom operators—Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel Ltd—turning marketing agents for Elon Musk’s satellite broadband project, Starlink, is a welcome development. The government must explicitly assist in this with funds from the Universal Service Obligation Fund, now dubbed the Digital Bharat Nidhi, to make satellite broadband connection affordable even for low-income communities in rural areas.

Ever since Jio stormed India’s wireless broadband market with initially free and later low-cost data plans, broadband usage in India has grown by leaps and bounds. But the fact remains that broadband access stays stunted at 47% of the population. That means over 750 million Indians do not have access to broadband.

In an economy undergoing structural change, seemingly generating lots of work but not so many jobs, it is vital that people have reliable and affordable access to broadband, to be informed of work opportunities, and, in very many cases, perform the work and deliver it. Also read | Can Musk factor, brand hype, Airtel-Jio partnerships boost Starlink’s services? A mission to connect 250,000 panchayats (local administrations), covering the bulk of India’s 600,000 odd villages, was launched in India in 2011. It was called the National Optical Fibre Network.

When Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, his government slammed its predecessor’s lackadaisical attitude towards implementing schemes that enrich people’s lives, and promised to complete the network in two years. It rebranded the scheme as Bharat Broadband Network, or BharatNet. But more than a decade later, Modi’s administration still has not achieved the target of providing broadband in 250,000 panchayats.