Jio Satellite Communications

On October 21, 2021, Jio Satellite Communications Limited was incorporated as a public limited company under India’s Companies Act, 2013, with its registered office in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and a business of providing communication services, including satellite-based communication services.⁠[1][1][1]

Two days later, on October 23, 2021, another company, Jio Space Technology Limited, was incorporated, also engaged in satellite-based communication services; it later became a joint venture between Jio Platforms and the satellite operator SES.⁠[1][1]

On February 14, 2022, Jio Platforms and Luxembourg-based SES announced Jio Space Technology Limited as a joint venture to provide satellite broadband services in India, with the two holding 51% and 49% respectively. The joint venture uses a multi-orbit network combining geostationary (GEO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites, including SES-12, SES’s high-throughput satellite serving India, and the next-generation MEO constellation O3b mPOWER, to serve enterprise, mobile backhaul, and retail customers; SES makes up to 100 Gbps of capacity available to it, and the joint venture will also build gateways in India. Jio, as anchor customer, signed a multi-year capacity purchase agreement, which together with gateway and equipment purchases had a total contract value of about $100 million.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

Akash Ambani, then a director of Jio, said the additional coverage and capacity from satellite communications would enable Jio to connect the remotest towns and villages.⁠[2][2]

On September 12, 2022, India’s Department of Telecommunications issued Jio Satellite Communications a Letter of Intent (LoI) for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) services; the news came from industry sources, and Reliance Jio did not respond to a request for comment at the time. A GMPCS license is valid for 20 years and allows the licensee to provide voice and data services via low-earth orbit, medium earth orbit, or geosynchronous satellites within the licensed service area.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

On October 27, 2023, Reliance Jio Infocomm demonstrated its satellite broadband service JioSpaceFiber at India Mobile Congress, calling it India’s first satellite-based giga fiber service. The service uses SES’s O3b and O3b mPOWER MEO satellites and also provides mobile backhaul capacity for the Jio True5G network; at the time of the demonstration, it had connected four remote locations: Gir in Gujarat, Korba in Chhattisgarh, Nabrangpur in Odisha, and ONGC-Jorhat in Assam.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

In April and June 2024, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) issued authorizations to the joint venture between Jio Platforms and SES, with Orbit Connect India as the authorized entity, allowing it to operate satellites over India; commencing operations still required approval from the Department of Telecommunications.⁠[5][5][5][5]

In March 2025, Jio Platforms announced an agreement with SpaceX to sell Starlink equipment in Jio stores and provide installation and activation support; the agreement was subject to SpaceX receiving its own authorizations to sell Starlink in India.⁠[6][6][6]

The draft red herring prospectus that Jio Platforms filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India on June 19, 2026, states that Jio Satellite Communications is its wholly owned subsidiary, with issued share capital of ₹1,172,000,000 (117,200,000 shares with a face value of ₹10 each), and holds a Unified License issued by India’s Department of Telecommunications, authorizing National Long Distance (NLD), GMPCS, VSAT Closed User Group, and Category A Internet Service Provider (ISP A) services.⁠[1][1][1]

Jio Space Technology is 51% owned by Jio Platforms and 49% by New Skies Satellites B.V.; it is a subsidiary of Jio Platforms under the Companies Act and is accounted for as a joint venture under Indian Accounting Standards. Jio Platforms said it was evaluating the development of its own satellite constellation and ground station infrastructure and considering partnerships with global satellite constellation operators; among its risk factors, it cautioned that there was no guarantee it could obtain the regulatory approvals needed for the satellite business in time.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2026, Lauren Dreyer, SpaceX’s vice president of business operations for Starlink, said at India Mobile Congress that Starlink had built 20 gateway sites in India and had designed its operations in line with India’s security requirements. That evening, Elon Musk posted on X that Starlink was being blocked by “certain oligarchs” in order to maintain their monopolistic control over the Indian people, without naming anyone.⁠[7][7][7][7][7]

Hours later, on Thursday, October 8, India’s communications ministry issued a statement saying the government had put in place a fair and non-discriminatory authorization framework for all telecommunication services, including satellite communications; under the license terms, every licensee must demonstrate compliance with security conditions, security assessments of all three licensees were under way, and a licensee could proceed to the next step of seeking spectrum assignment only after completing its assessment. The ministry noted that the three were currently at broadly the same regulatory stage, and said that the suggestion that the framework or its application was unfair or discriminatory was “baseless and misconceived.” The response did not name any company or Musk.⁠[8][9][9][9][9][9][8]

The three licensees are Starlink, Reliance’s Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti group-backed Eutelsat OneWebEutelsat OneWebEutelsat OneWeb is the low-earth-orbit satellite communications company of the French satellite operator Eutelsat. Its predecessor, OneWeb, was founded in 2012 and operates a low-earth-orbit constellation of more than 600 satellites, mainly providing broadband connectivity to enterprise, government, aviation, and maritime customers. In 2020, while under U.S. bankruptcy protection, it was acquired by the UK government and India’s Bharti group, and in 2023 it was combined into Eutelsat; its Indian joint venture is one of three companies in India holding a satellite broadband license.Open the full entry, all of which have obtained Unified Licenses with GMPCS authorization; the licenses do not themselves include the right to use spectrum, and frequencies must be separately assigned by the Department of Telecommunications’ Wireless Planning and Coordination wing. Jio and Airtel did not immediately respond to ReutersReutersReuters is an international news agency founded in London in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter and is now the news business of Thomson Reuters. It provides text, photo, video, and graphics coverage to media and institutional clients and distributes it through channels such as Reuters Connect.Open the full entry’ requests for comment; asked by Business Today about Musk’s allegation, Jio Platforms managing director Akash Ambani said the company wanted to keep its head down and deliver value to Indian consumers; in another report the same day, he declined to comment, saying he had not seen Musk’s remarks. On the same day, Musk posted again on X asking, “Is Ambani the real boss of India?”⁠[7][10][10][10][8][1][10][11][7]

As of October 8, 2026, none of the three licensees had launched commercial satellite broadband services in India, and commercial launches depended on government approvals that had yet to be granted. The Department of Telecommunications had approved a satellite spectrum charge of 5% of adjusted gross revenue, which was yet to be approved by the Union Cabinet. India’s terrestrial broadband market is dominated by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which together have roughly 910 million broadband subscribers, more than 80% of the national market; Deloitte has forecast that India’s satellite broadband market will be worth about $1.9 billion by 2030.⁠[12][10][7][7][12][8]

Jio Platforms: Official website: https://www.jio.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]