Elon Musk commented of the potential entry of Starlink in the Indian market, stating that he is looking forward to serving the people of the country with the satellite internet service. The comment by Musk came on the meeting of Starlink's vice president of business operations, Lauren Dreyer and Indian communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.
Reacting to the tweet by Scindia, Musk wrote, “Looking forward to serving India with @Starlink!”
Scindia had said after the meeting that satellite technology will play a pivotal roal in extending connectivity to the people in rural and hard to reach regions in the country. The minister also said that the meeting with Dreyer and senior SpaceX leadership was to discuss ‘advancing satellite-based last-mile access across India.’
“As we work to advance PM @narendramodi ji’s vision of a digitally empowered India, Satellite technology will play a pivotal role in extending connectivity to the most remote parts of the country & strengthening internet access to every citizen in rural and hard-to-reach regions, ensuring that digital inclusion accelerates broader development.” Scindia wrote in his post
Meanwhile, Dreyer noted in her pos noted that Starlink is “committed to working shoulder to shoulder with you to bring high speed connectivity and digital empowerment to every part of India.”
During a recent episode of WTF podcast with Nikhil Kamath, Musk had talked about the use of Starlink to bring network connectivity to rural areas. The billionaire also noted that the service isn't well suited to densely populated urban areas owing to the limiations of physics and network capacity.
“Physics is not on our side here. So, it's not physically possible for Starlink to serve densely populated cities” Musk said during the podcast
“Starlink can serve maybe 1% or 2% of a densely populated city. But it can be much more effective in rural areas where the Internet connection is much worse. And often, people either have no access to Internet or it's extremely expensive or the quality is not very good.” he added
Starlink's recent price leak:
Recently, the price of Starlink services in India had leaked via the official website which showed the monthly subscription price of ₹8,600 and a one-time hardware cost of ₹34,000.
The prices, however, were quickly refuted by Dreyer who said that the company's website was not live yet and the pricing had emerged as part of the e "dummy test data" caused by a technical glitch.
