Satellite internet war is coming. Florida-based Spacecoin is gearing up to enter India later this year, offering satellite-based internet services priced under Rs 200 a month, taking competition directly to Elon Musk’s Starlink and other players.
Unlike Starlink, which aims to offer 5G-like broadband speeds, Spacecoin intends to offer low-bandwidth services such as financial access, messaging, and basic web browsing to Indians in remote areas, where traditional networks are difficult to deploy, founder Tae Oh has told Moneycontrol.
Spacecoin plans to enter India through a partnership model, providing its satellite-based communication services in tie up with existing players.
“We are in talks with several telecom companies in India, doing the co-engineering of the service. We are also interested in working with the existing telcos to provide our satellite services to their users,” Tae Oh said over the phone from Florida. “We were getting a lot of positive feedback from those telcos about the demand in people of India in remote areas.”
He expects to finalise the first telco partnership later this year.
Beaming market
He said Indian telcos are interested in Spacecoin’s satellite technology to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink internet service.
“They also want to compete with SpaceX to provide good enough coverage for people who cannot be serviced. We don't plan to go directly to customers in India. We are hoping to work with existing telcos,” Tae Oh said.
The company is targeting a $2 (Rs 170) a month subscription as a starting fee and charge more based on data usage.
“More data means you'll have to pay more, but we're targeting $2 monthly. Telcos will do the billing for consumers. Telcos will have to pay the network for data transmission, for which a fee will be payable to Spacecoin,” he said.
The company’s entry into India aligns with the ambitions of several global satellite players, including Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Eutelsat OneWeb, and Apple partner Globalstar, who are also eyeing the Indian market to launch their satellite-based services.
Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio’s JV with SES have already secured GMPCS licences and IN-SPACe approval.
Starlink, which recently entered into distribution and technology partnerships with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, is awaiting approvals from the department of telecommunications and IN-SPACe. Kuiper and Globalstar are awaiting similar approvals.
The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre IN-SPACe is an autonomous agency under the department of space to promote and supervise space activities by non-government entities and academia.
Spacecoin's roadmap
In December, Spacecoin launched its first satellite and plans to build a whole constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellites. It will launch three more satellites with SpaceX in October.
“Our mission started last year, when we launched our first satellite with SpaceX in December. This year, we are launching three more satellites with SpaceX in October,” he said.
“We are targeting to start deploying our surface constellation after defining our technical specifications for the satellites that we use and testing the satellites that we will launch this year.”
The company expects to provide satcom services across the globe with under 10 satellites.
“About 10 or fewer satellites can be a good starting point to let people experience the service. After reaching ten satellites, we can start scaling. Hundreds of thousands of satellites will be in the project,” he said.
The company is building a global Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN), enabled by blockchain-based LEO satellite constellations.
The DePIN is an open-source project, which means any company that wants to participate can deploy its own satellite using Spacecoin’s technology, operate that satellite, and earn a share of the data transmission fees on the network, the executive added.
“So we're planning to be the first one to deploy the servicing satellite constellation but we can foresee other telecommunications companies, military and governments deploying their constellation to be part of this network and share all those satellites together,” he said.
In the first phase, the company aims to enter India, Nigeria, and Indonesia to offer ultra-affordable satellite communication services.
Before foraying into the Satcom space, Spacecoin operated as a fintech lender and digital bank in emerging markets, focusing on Nigeria.
“While we were working on our mission to bank the unbanked, we learned that many of the unbanked population were also unconnected and if you're not connected to the Internet, there is no way for a fintech solution or crypto solution to help you financially or technologically. That’s why we entered into satcom,” Tae Oh said.
The executive said that the innovation led by SpaceX in the space sector has significantly reduced the cost of launching and building satellites. “The cost of launching satellites and building satellites has gotten low enough for smaller companies to start launching their satellite, and that started us to build satellites and research more.”
Spacecoin initially evaluated building something similar to existing satellite internet solutions such as Starlink but found them economically unfeasible for its target consumer.
With Starlink hardware priced around $600 and a monthly subscription fee of $150, the total cost exceeded what is affordable in many emerging markets, where the average GDP per capita is approximately $2,000. This cost structure did not align with Spacecoin’s mission to serve underserved communities, Tae Oh said.
Starlink’s infrastructure is optimised for high-bandwidth applications like 4K video streaming. In contrast, Spacecoin is focussed on providing low-bandwidth services.
“By targeting lower-bandwidth use cases, Spacecoin can optimize its network for a higher number of simultaneous connections rather than higher data speeds,” he said.
(Disclosure: Moneycontrol is a part of the Network18 group. Network18 is controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.)
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