Amid the brouhaha over the proposed entry of satellite communication players including Elon Musk-backed Starlink, Forrester Research on Tuesday said that the service will be dead on arrival.

According to Ashutosh Sharma, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester, satcom shows promise in terms of its capabilities to match broadband internet but it will be hard-pressed to compete with existing players in India in terms of pricing.

Limited space

“Considering the 5G coverage in India is widespread, the space that we have for satellite coverage to grow is very limited. The second thing, if you look at the space, is price economics. If you come to the retail, things start to fall apart. In Kenya, when Starlink launched, it struggled to get any customers. In one or two years, they got around 4,500 customers. In India, customers are equally pricey. It’s very, very difficult for something like this to grow,” said Sharma.

Forrester’s prediction comes at a time when there is an ongoing battle between legacy telcos and satcom players. Mobile operators including Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd are worried that Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper satcom services will directly compete with telcos .

However, Sharma said, “In places like the US where people are scattered across hinterlands, satcom makes sense. But in India, everything is connected. The main issue with satcom will be affordability; even if satcom finds a customer base in India’s remote regions, folks will be hard-pressed to meet the price demands.”

Sharma added that the service did have appeal for specific sectors like marine, aviation or transportation.

“You will still get adoption in certain sectors like shipping and aviation. Even if you’re not from one of those sectors, there could still be some cases where you might see evolution, especially if you are into large-scale management. But so far, at least in 2025, you’re not going to see that happen,” he said, advising people to wait and watch as the technology evolves.

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