Airtel has announced a partnership with SpaceX to bring Starlink’s high-speed internet services to India, subject to obtaining necessary authorisations from the Elon Musk-owned company.
Airtel has 550 million customers across 15 countries, including India and Africa. Gopal Vittal, managing director and vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, said, “Working with SpaceX to offer Starlink to Airtel customers in India is a significant milestone and further demonstrates our commitment to next-generation satellite connectivity.”
As per the announcement, Airtel and SpaceX will explore offering Starlink equipment at Airtel retail stores. This will provide Starlink services to business customers, schools, and health centres in underserved areas, and use Airtel’s ground infrastructure to support Starlink services.
Starlink is SpaceX’s satellite internet service offering high-speed, low-latency broadband worldwide. “The team at Airtel has played a pivotal role in India’s telecom story. So working with them to complement our direct offering makes great sense for our business,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer at SpaceX. The partnership will explore how Starlink can complement Airtel’s services and leverage the latter’s market knowledge in India. This will expand Airtel’s connectivity portfolio, add to its alliance with Eutelsat OneWeb, and enable it to offer enterprise connectivity packages using Starlink.
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