Starlink sees explosive growth, adds 1 million users in weeks; when will satellite internet arrive in India?

Starlink has added one million users in just seven weeks, crossing nine million globally as anticipation builds around its long-awaited commercial launch in India.

Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service has crossed a new milestone by expanding its active user base to more than 9 million across the world. The company announced the feat on Wednesday, which is its quickest to date, as Starlink took less than two months to add 1 million new users to its existing 8 million. Starlink provides satellite broadband internet connectivity to areas around the world with unreliable or no traditional terrestrial broadband connections.

Starlink, which is operated by SpaceX, says that its service is now live across over 155 countries and territories, providing coverage for residential areas, ships, planes and even to underserved rural regions. In its blog post on Wednesday, Starlink added that in the past week alone, more than 20,000 new terminals were shipped to users globally. The rise in subscribers is a testimony to the growing consumer appetite for satellite broadband connectivity from Starlink in areas where it is available.

Elon Musk’s Starlink provides satellite broadband internet connectivity to over 9 million active users.

SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation

Starlink operates a network of over 9,000 low-Earth orbit satellites, which it uses to beam internet connectivity to the ground at a maximum speed of 150Mbps. The satellites provide stable internet access to customers in regions that lack fast fibre broadband or even reliable mobile internet service, which is the case for several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central Asia and South America.

Its presence in such areas and the service’s performance means it is a valuable lifeline to families and businesses in rural communities for educational, professional and emergency communications and connectivity.

The Road to India

Starlink was first spotted in India after it began accepting pre-orders without having secured regulatory clearances from the Indian government in 2022, which at the time was a major hurdle for the company and forced it to pause sign-ups in the country. Since then, however, Starlink has made significant progress with Indian regulators to begin providing services in the country. It was earlier granted a license by India’s Department of Telecommunications as well as clearance from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe), a government body responsible for the promotion of the Indian private space industry.

Starlink has continued to make progress on the ground with Indian partners and hired a local workforce to build ground infrastructure and supporting logistics for a commercial launch that is set to come after it gets approval for spectrum allocation and completes all necessary compliance with Indian regulators.

Starlink in India: Opportunities and Challenges

India is a large digital market with more than a billion internet subscribers and a broadband ecosystem in the world’s second-most populous country that is evolving with healthy adoption of new 5G mobile services.

Given India’s current broadband ecosystem, satellite broadband will have some opportunities in the country and more so in areas where terrestrial networks might be inadequate or overburdened. The broadband satellite will likely also find additional use cases in India from government, businesses and the residential sector, as it has for Starlink in other countries.

Local reports have indicated that Starlink will likely provide prices that are more competitive in India to win a slice of the telecom market in the country and even set plans that could easily win Starlink millions of subscribers in urban and rural areas. However, the company has not provided further clarity on how it intends to price its service in the country or even how its hardware costs and service fees will fare in India’s price-sensitive market.