Satellite internet access under the Starlink banner has yet to reach India, and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has made that delay a recurring subject of public commentary directed at Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani. On the social media platform X, Musk applied the label "prime minister" to Ambani, a characterisation that carried an implicit suggestion of outsized influence over India's governmental apparatus.
Musk has separately contended that Ambani's actions kept Starlink out of the market, a service he argues could extend internet connectivity to underserved communities, broaden learning access for children, and help small businesses reach customers beyond their local areas. In a Friday post, Musk posed a pointed question to an unnamed recipient, asking whether, despite any preference for maintaining a dominant position in India's internet market, there might be willingness to let Starlink enter as a competitor — a message that followed his earlier, unattributed assertions that certain unnamed business figures had been working to keep the satellite service out of the country in order to shield their own market positions.
In response to Musk's allegations, the communications ministry put forward its position that spectrum licensing rules are applied on equal terms across all operators, and separately noted that Starlink — along with two other licence-holders — has yet to clear a security review that stands as a prerequisite for any satellite spectrum assignment. That statement disputed the notion that Starlink has been subjected to regulatory treatment aimed at targeting it differently from other operators.
Authorisation to begin commercial operations has not yet been extended to Starlink, even though the company holds a number of regulatory approvals. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are each pushing to roll out satellite internet offerings into a telecom market where rivalry between providers runs deep.
Two separate satellite ventures are taking shape in India's telecom sector — Reliance Jio through its tie-up with Luxembourg-headquartered SES, and Airtel by way of its arrangement with Eutelsat OneWeb. Disputes over how satellite spectrum would be divided between Starlink and Reliance Jio had already produced friction in earlier rounds of talks, with two competing visions emerging at the table: SpaceX backing an administrative assignment model, while Jio threw its weight behind a market-based auction approach. An administrative allocation process yielded an outcome that worked in Starlink's favour.
On his X account, Musk posed a question about whether Ambani holds outsized influence over Indian governance, while separately, his plans to bring both Starlink and Tesla into the Indian market have run into obstacles. During its opening year of operations, the electric vehicle manufacturer logged 699 units delivered — a figure shaped in part by tariff-driven price gaps that placed its vehicles well above what buyers were paying in the United States. Tesla's vehicle pricing in India has held above what many buyers can afford, even after the company took steps to bring costs down.
Telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia put forward a renewed pledge on behalf of the government, stating that monopolistic conduct across any industry would not be permitted to take hold.
