India’s top telcos apply satellite, AI policy pressure at IMC24

• India Mobile Congress 2024 (IMC24) has opened its doors in New Delhi 
• Airtel’s Sunil Bharti Mittal joins rivals Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea to press the government for an auction of satellite broadband spectrum 
• They want a level playing field between satellite providers and traditional telcos but they might be out of luck  
• Jio is also pressing for domestic AI development and adoption as well as data sovereignty policies

NEW DELHI – India Mobile Congress 2024 (IMC24) – India’s leading telcos, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, exerted satellite spectrum and AI policy pressure on the country’s rulemakers during the inaugural session of IMC24 here in India’s capital, but, in the satellite broadband domain at least, they might struggle to prevail.

The head honchos of all of India’s leading telecom service providers were present at the opening session of the event, which kicked off on Tuesday and was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Held annually, the four-day event is organised by India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and is one of the largest telecom events in Asia (it is not linked to the GSMA or the Mobile World Congress events). 

Akash Ambani, chairman at Reliance Jio, India’s largest service provider (with 479 million customers), focused on two key areas of development. He stressed that India should “holistically embrace artificial intelligence driven by maximum Atma Nirbhar [self-reliance] efforts,” and made a plea for data sovereignty.

“The scale and speed of multilingual data generation, which would drive the AI revolution, will grow exponentially. We request the government to expedite the updating of the 2020 draft of the Data Center Policy so that Indian data remains within the Indian datacentres,” said Ambani. “Indian companies ready to set up AI and machine learning datacentres should get all the necessary incentives, including incentives for power consumption,” he added. 

Satellite broadband spectrum spat

Jio has also been pressing the Indian government recently to auction rather than allocate spectrum for satellite broadband services in India and that argument was picked up during the inaugural session by Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises, the parent company of Bharti Airtel.

He argued that the government should auction satellite spectrum to create a level-playing field between traditional telecom service providers, which have participated in multiple auctions for their cellular spectrum licences, and satellite broadband providers. While no names were specifically mentioned, the main competitive concern for India’s telcos is Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation, which is keen to provide its services in India and keen on a licence allocation process. 

“Those satellite companies that have ambitions to come into urban areas serving elite retail customers need to take the telecom licences like everybody else [and] be bound with the same conditions. They need to buy the spectrum [in the same way] as the telecom companies buy [it]. They need to pay the licence fee as telecom companies do and also secure the networks like telecom companies do. This is a simple solution that can be done on a global scale, and India can again show the way in this particular regard,” proclaimed Mittal.

His comments are significant, as they are not in line with Airtel’s previously stated position: It should be noted that Bharti Enterprises is the largest single shareholder in satellite network operator Eutelsat OneWeb, a Starlink rival that hopes to soon launch services in India via its low-earth orbit (LEO) constellation. 

The comments come during an ongoing debate in India about how best to allocate spectrum for satellite broadband connectivity services. Traditional satellite service licences have been allocated to companies on an administrative basis, but as the services now being proposed by the likes of Starlink are for broadband connectivity and will, therefore, compete directly with the fibre broadband and 5G-enabled fixed wireless access (FWA) services being offered by the telcos, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio have been lobbying for an auction process. Airtel has been in favour of administrative allocation of the spectrum – at least until now.

But it seems these pleas have fallen on deaf ears as India’s communications minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia, stated on Tuesday that satellite spectrum will be allocated administratively at a set price to operators and that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) would determine the details.  

Growing concerns regarding 5G monetisation

In line with the theme of this year’s event, The Future is Now, the IMC24 agenda also focuses on key and emerging technologies such as AI, 6G (where India is hoping to play a leading role courtesy of its Bharat 6G Alliance), quantum computing, cybersecurity, edge computing and cloud. Unlike last year, when the mood was unmistakably upbeat in the wake of the rapid rollout of national 5G services by Jio and Airtel, there is now a growing concern about the slow pace of 5G monetisation and its impact on the industry, despite a large financial impact being assigned by minister Scindia to the deployment of 5G. Several people (specifically employees of service providers) who spoke to TelecomTV at IMC24 raised this concern and highlighted growing anxiety about the potential impact on jobs as a result of the growing adoption of AI.

Vibrancy at Vodafone Idea

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. The vibrancy on show at the Vodafone Idea booth was heartening and very welcome for a service provider that has been going through some tough times over the past few years. “This year has been an important one for Vodafone Idea as the company has taken critical steps in its own transformation journey,” said Kumar Manglam Birla, chairperson of Aditya Birla Group, which holds a 14.99% stake in India’s third-largest service provider.

Birla was referring to Vodafone Idea’s Follow-on Public Offer (FPO) earlier this year, which helped the company raise funds to bring down its debt and invest in 4G network upgrades and expansion, and to start its 5G network deployment: It recently awarded deals worth $3.6bn to Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia as the first step in its new investment programme.

– Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, TelecomTV