The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has provisionally allocated satellite spectrum to Bharti-owned Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance Jio's satellite arm. This is a major step towards the start of satellite services in the country. These satellite communication (satcom) companies have received the spectrum for six months from the telecom department.

DoT has given satellite companies this spectrum so that the satcom players could demonstrate all the required compliances related to security and technical conditions. The spectrum could only be given to the companies which secured a license from DoT and an In-Space authorisation certificate. Since only Jio-SES and Eutelsat OneWeb met this condition, these two could get the spectrum, said an ET report.

Now the concerned satcom companies can offer services to the users. However, they can't be commercial in nature, i.e., they can't be charged for. This will help the telcos in testing their technology and proving to the regulator, government, and the consumers how good the satellite technology is for communications.

However, one thing to note here would be that there's no angle for direct consumer services at the moment. Both satcom companies mentioned above want to serve in the B2B domain initially. This is because the mobile data and fiber are pretty cheap and consumers won't likely pay for expensive satcom services.

OneWeb has received spectrum provisionally before as well for 90 days. This allowed OneWeb to test the network capabilities. The major question that DoT and TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) have to address here is the pricing of the spectrum and how it is going to be allocated. At the moment, TRAI has shown support for the administrative allocation of airwaves. However, that won't go down well with the telecom players.