Starlink is welcome. Dependence is not. Rules that apply equally to every network are insurance, not hostility
Elon Musk says Starlink “would help the least served in India, especially in rural areas”. He is probably right. A remote village in Ladakh or Arunachal could get the same connection as an office in Gurugram. But the debate in Delhi, over spectrum pricing, licences and security clearances, misses the larger shift his satellites represent. The sky just above us is being divided between two powers, and every country will soon be asked to pick a side. India has faced such a choice before. In 1961, it refused to choose. It should refuse again, and this time lead.
SpaceX now has more than 11,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, over half of all satellites circling the Earth, and approval for thousands more. China is building two rival networks, Guowang and Qianfan, each designed for well over 10,000 satellites. Amazon is close behind. Within a decade, most of the world’s satellite internet will come from a handful of American and Chinese networks.
Why does this matter? Because low orbit is not infinite. A physicist would put it simply. Satellites must keep safe distances from one another, fly at particular heights and share a limited band of radio frequencies. The useful region is a thin shell, only a few hundred kilometres deep. If it gets too crowded, a single collision can scatter debris that causes others, a chain reaction scientists call the Kessler syndrome. Under today’s international rules, the best heights and frequencies go largely to whoever claims them first, and an operator that deploys on schedule keeps its claim. Those who launch first, keep. Those who come later, ask.
The giants already behave like landlords. In 2021, China complained to the United Nations that its space station had twice manoeuvred to avoid Starlink satellites. This year SpaceX began moving thousands of its satellites to a lower altitude. Each decision reshapes a shared commons, and each was made by one country or company.
The Cold War divided nations by which superpower supplied their weapons. The coming decades may divide them by which superpower supplies their internet. A country that wires its schools, hospitals, banks and armed forces into one network will find it very hard to leave. Switching would mean replacing every dish and every gateway. Dependence gets built into the hardware.
Ukraine has already shown what this means. After Russia’s invasion, Starlink kept its soldiers, officials and hospitals connected, a genuine lifeline. But Kyiv also learnt that decisions about where the service worked, and for whom, were being taken inside a private company in California. Gratitude and vulnerability arrived in the same box.
Satellites also ignore borders. A dish smuggled across a frontier works as well as one sold in a shop. Reports that Starlink terminals were in use in Iran, where the service is not licensed, reportedly gave Delhi’s security establishment pause. India rightly insists that satellite operators route Indian traffic through gateways on Indian soil. But gateways protect data. They do not protect choice. No Indian government should want its security to rest on a decision made in someone else’s boardroom, whether in America or in China.
India knows this lesson better than most. During the Kargil war in 1999, it was reportedly denied GPS data it urgently needed. The answer, eventually, was NavIC, India’s own navigation system. Dependence on someone else’s sky has a price, and India has paid it once.
India’s position today is unusual. It is the largest market Starlink has yet to enter, a space power in its own right, and a voice the Global South listens to. When OneWeb, Starlink’s rival, lost access to Russian rockets in 2022, it was ISRO that carried 72 of its satellites into orbit. Indian companies are now building satellite services of their own. That combination is rare, and it should be used for more than a good tariff.
History offers a precedent few remember. In 1976, eight equatorial countries signed the Bogotá Declaration, claiming the geostationary orbit above their territory as their own. The legal claim failed, but the politics worked. Pressure from developing nations pushed the International Telecommunication Union to guarantee every country a slot and frequencies in that orbit, including countries that could not yet launch a satellite. The latecomers were protected by rules, not rockets.
Low orbit has no such protection today. India should demand one. What would orbital non-alignment look like in practice? Three steps.
First, constellation portability. Indians can carry their mobile number from one company to another. India should likewise require that satellite services sold here use dishes and gateways that can switch between networks. Flat electronic antennas can already track satellites from more than one system, and global 5G standards now include satellite links. Critical users, such as the armed forces, power grids and banks, should connect through at least two networks, so that no single switch can turn them off. This is easy to demand now, while Starlink still seeks entry. It will be impossible later.
Second, a Bogotá for low orbit. India should lead a coalition at the ITU for fair, reserved access to low orbit and its frequencies for countries that cannot yet launch. The next World Radiocommunication Conference, in 2027, is the place to begin. Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa share the same worry. The coalition should also press for a traffic code: mandatory sharing of orbital data, clear rules on collision avoidance, and liability for debris. India’s own tracking effort, Project NETRA, gives it standing to argue. The developing world won its share of the geostationary arc fifty years ago. It can win a share of the low sky now, but only before that sky is full.
Third, a shared sky for the neighbourhood. In 2017, India launched the South Asia Satellite and offered it to its neighbours. That idea should now grow up. ISRO and Indian industry can build a modest network open to partners across South Asia, Africa and the Indian Ocean. It need not match Starlink in size, or be the cheapest or fastest. It only has to ensure that no partner is left with a single choice.
None of this means shutting Starlink out. Non-aligned India bought arms from many countries and became dependent on none. It can buy connectivity the same way. Rules that apply equally to every network, whether American, Chinese or Indian, are not hostility. They are insurance.
The real question before Delhi is not whether to let Musk’s satellites in. It is whether India becomes one more customer of someone else’s sky, or the country that writes fair rules for everyone’s. In 1961, India stood outside two blocs and gave voice to many. The sky is where that choice will be made again.
The author is a physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a contributing opinion writer at the Wall Street Journal; Views presented are personal.