Jio Space Technology, in JV with SES, to offer satellite internet in India

Jio Platforms, the technology investment arm of telecom operator Reliance Jio, has announced the setting up of Jio Space Technology Ltd. The company is a joint venture (JV) with Luxembourg-based veteran satellite connectivity provider SES, and will seek to offer satellite internet services to consumers and enterprises in India.

With the new entity, Jio Space Technology will rival other entrants in this field, which include JVs such as fellow Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel and UK-based satellite operator OneWeb, Tata-backed Nelco and the Canadian satellite operator TeleSat, and independent foreign entities such as the Jeff Bezos-backed Project Kuiper and Elon Musk’s SpaceX-backed Starlink.

SES operates a total of 70 deployed satellites in geostationary (GEOs) and medium Earth orbits (MEOs), specifically the SES-12 GEO and O3b-mPower MEO satellites. Jio will offer managed services and gateway infrastructure operations to bring the connectivity to the consumer front.

Interestingly, the Jio-SES JV for satellite internet uses GEO and MEO satellites, as against the common trend of using low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The latter is what’s being used by most participants in this sector, including Starlink, Airtel-OneWeb, Kuiper and Nelco-TeleSat.

LEOs, which are typically smaller in size and easier to deploy, reside between altitudes of 160 and 2,000 kilometres above the Earth surface. Each satellite in a constellation of LEO satellites cover a smaller ground area, but orbit the earth very fast — thereby requiring multiple satellites to offer connectivity and other satellite-driven services to areas around the world. However, LEO satellites are cheaper to build and deploy, and also offer faster connectivity to ground stations.

GEOs, meanwhile, move along with the speed of the Earth and lie on the equatorial plane, because of which they appear stationary from Earth (and hence the name). While they require lesser ground stations and do not need multiple satellites to relay connectivity, GEO satellites are more expensive to build and deploy, and generally offer higher latency in the connectivity they offer.

Going forward, it remains to be seen how the internet connectivity services offered by Jio Space Technology line up alongside Starlink, Airtel-OneWeb and the others.

Jio has also clarified that it will continue expanding its fibre broadband services in India alongside the satellite internet offering. Akash Ambani, director of Jio, said in a statement, “While we continue to expand our fibre-based connectivity and FTTH business and invest in 5G, this new joint venture with SES will further accelerate the growth of multigigabit broadband. With additional coverage and capacity offered by satellite communications services, Jio will be able to connect the remotest towns and villages, enterprises, government establishments and consumers.”