SpaceX founder Elon Musk is quite intrigued by the idea of setting up High-Speed broadband services in rural India. As per sources, SpaceX’s satellite broadband arm Starlink is planning to explore a collaboration with local Indian telecom service providers to expand the broadband services in rural areas.
Sanjay Bhargava, the country director at Starlink, India recently revealed that talks with broadband service providers will commence once the 12 Phase-1 aspirational districts are identified by the NITI Aayog and the company will see the interest levels of the various players and the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
Bhargava is hoping to receive a time-bound 100% broadband plan that’ll serve as a model for other districts. Bhargava further admits that everything isn’t as easy as it seems predicting that a few broadband providers might not be so open to the idea of such collaboration.
The company promises a data speed of 50-150 mb/s in the beta stage, and it reportedly claims to have over 5,000 pre-orders from India. The company charges a deposit fee of Rs 7,350($99) per customer.
