Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and founder of Bharti Enterprises, has put forward the position that Eutelsat OneWeb ought to receive Indian regulatory clearance for satellite broadband ahead of Starlink, citing the roughly five years his company's application has been in the pipeline alongside the groundwork it has already laid.
At a panel session held within the Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2026 in New Delhi on Wednesday, Mittal told attendees that the ground network infrastructure for OneWeb had been operational and ready for three years, with the company's satellites having held their positions over India for around five years.
Regulatory approvals had not yet come through, Mittal indicated, though the company held the view that its place in the queue was well advanced given how long its application had been on file. A spokesperson for OneWeb conveyed that regulatory clearance arriving even a handful of days ahead of Starlink's own approval would be acceptable, pointing to the company's longer standing in the queue and the groundwork already laid for its India-facing operations.
Those remarks surfaced against a backdrop of an ongoing disagreement over whether Starlink should be allowed to enter India's satellite broadband sector. In posts on X over the preceding week, Elon Musk put forward claims that certain Indian businesses were standing in the way of the company's entry into that market.
The Union Ministry of Communications pushed back against claims of unequal treatment for satellite communication operators, or of any firm receiving an advantage over others. The ministry maintained that all three entities stood at broadly equivalent points in the regulatory process, and rejected as unfounded and misconceived any suggestion that the approval framework, or the way it had been applied, operated unfairly or discriminatorily.
Satellite broadband access under the OneWeb India Communications Private Limited banner is set to roll out on a commercial basis across the country. Its network runs on satellites held in low Earth orbit, a band close enough to the planet's surface that data travels between ground and space with relatively little delay.
Eutelsat Group, the parent organisation, took shape when France-headquartered Eutelsat and OneWeb — a venture backed by the United Kingdom — combined their operations. Bharti Enterprises holds a position as one of the notable shareholders within the merged entity, through which Mittal's business secures a foothold in the Indian arm of OneWeb's operations.
Disputes over how approvals should be handled have surfaced at a moment when space-based internet providers are positioning themselves to enter India's broadband landscape, where obtaining the necessary licences stands as a prerequisite before any commercial rollout.
