CIHS – Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies

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Why Starlink Is Not a Telecom Story Alone

India needs better connectivity. It should not pay for it with strategic independence. Dr. Nitin Sharma India is at a crossroads. It must now take tough decisions and take them without bowing to pressure from anyone. Satellite internet can reach remote villages, mountain regions and underserved communities. But one question has got far less attention than it deserves. Who will control that connectivity? Starlink has secured a key regulatory foothold in India. Commercial services still need spectrum assignment and security clearance. While we wait, the debate is about speed, price and competition. Those matter. They are not the most important issues. India has sensitive borders. It faces complex internal security challenges. Satellite communication cannot be treated as just another telecom service. The real question is not whether Starlink can deliver faster internet. It probably can. The question is whether India should let a strategic layer of its communications depend on a foreign private company. Its satellites, technology and final decisions sit outside our control. We have faced this dilemma before. The lesson of Kargil In 1999, during the Kargil war with Pakistan, India sought GPS data for the region from the United States. USA took the side of Pakistan and refused to make the GPS data available. Indian side was left in dark, and it became even harder for us to win that war.  The exact details remain a subject of debate. The lesson was clear. A country cannot assume that technology owned by another nation will be there when its security is at stake. India responded by building its own regional navigation system, NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation). That was not just a science project. It was a strategic decision. It was the first step becoming “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. Navigation in war cannot depend on another country’s goodwill. Now the same question arises in communications. We spent years and public money to reduce dependence on foreign navigation. Why should we accept a similar dependence on satellite communication now? Off course this is a different time and different technology, but principle of Self-reliance and sovereignty is still the same.   When one company holds the switch Starlink is an impressive achievement. Its low-earth-orbit satellites connect places where ordinary networks are hard to build or easy to damage. In Ukraine, it kept people and forces connected when networks failed. That experience also raised hard questions. Public controversies over coverage near Crimea, limits on military use and terminal activation showed how much power a private provider can hold in a conflict. The point is not that Starlink failed Ukraine. It helped a great deal. The point is who decides. Imagine India’s security relying on a network where a company’s leadership, foreign rules or another government’s interests can shape decisions. Could India guarantee uninterrupted service? Could it stop remote restrictions? If there is a dispute, whose instructions prevail? A commercial contract cannot answer these questions. National security needs real control over critical capabilities. Even Europe wants its own network India is not alone in this thinking. The European Union is close to the United States. Yet it is building its own secure satellite networks, IRIS² and GOVSATCOM. The aim is communications under European control for government and strategic use. Brussels has said the system is “Built in Europe, operated in Europe, under European control.” If allies of Washington want that independence, India has even more reason to examine its own position. Strategic autonomy is not distrust. It is the recognition that national interests are supreme in all situations. Governments change. Policies change. Even commercial ties can become tools of pressure. A mature country plans for that before a crisis. The security risk is real This is not only about future wars. In late 2024, Starlink equipment was recovered in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and in Manipur. Security agencies took notice. India deals with cross-border infiltration, insurgency and trafficking. Unauthorised satellite terminals entering through porous borders deserves serious scrutiny. Elon Musk said Starlink beams were switched off over India. Questions remain unanswered then how these devices found in Manipur actually was working. Some reports suggested they could have connected through services available in neighboring territory. Those claims are not conclusively established. The incidents still exposed a real challenge. A satellite network does not rely only on towers and cables inside our territory. The satellites are overhead. The control systems may be thousands of kilometers away. Software, terminal approvals and service limits can be managed remotely. There is more. Reports said Indian authorities struggled to get ownership details for a seized terminal. In normal times, that is a privacy dispute. In a sensitive border zone, delay can be dangerous. India cannot be unsure who is using a terminal in a border area. India should be able to switch off a rouge device quickly and decision and real control should lie in India. We cannot be unsure about these matters. A license is not control The government has seen these risks. Conditions reportedly include data localisation, lawful interception, local monitoring, terminal identification and limits on sending sensitive data abroad. These are necessary. But rules on paper do not guarantee results. A company can open an Indian office, hire Indian staff and run gateways in India. The satellites, software and final authority can still sit with the parent company abroad. That difference matters. If a security agency needs data on a rogue terminal, will it get it under Indian law, without foreign approval? If connectivity must be cut in a border area, will the restriction hold across the network? If an international crisis pressures the provider, what protection does India really have? Approval should depend on these answers. Declarations of compliance are not enough. In strategic technology, capabilities must be tested independently. A condition is only as strong as the power to enforce it. Policy must not bend to pressure There is another issue. Independent policymaking. Musk recently attacked what he called monopolistic practices in India’s telecom market. The Ministry of Communications immediately rejected the claim. It

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Bharat Economy Policy Technology
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Windowless Buildings Holding Up Viksit Bharat

India is building data centres at record speed. Harder question is who owns the intelligence inside these centres. Dr. Nitin Sharma The first-quarter GDP numbers for FY 2026-27 have done more than just beat expectations. They have restored a certain confidence. The economy grew 7.8 per cent. That was much more than Reserve Bank’s forecast. It was one of the strongest starts to a fiscal year we have seen in a while and it came despite tense geopolitical developments and surge in energy prices internationally. Manufacturing held up. So did services, investment and household spending. The story is familiar now. India keeps growing faster than most large economies. Foreign investors seem to agree. This is manifested in the fact that India drew record $ 94.53 billion in FDI inflows during 2025-26, up 17 per cent on previous year’s performance. But, let’s get realistic. A quarterly number is just an indicator. What matters is the direction. Viksit Bharat is the goal: a developed economy pump primed at $ 30-35 trillion by 2047. And, one most understated part of this edifice is data centre. For most part of last century, we measured the country’s strength in steel, cement in tonnes and megawatts or gigawatts. Ports moved goods. Railways moved people and cargo. Grids kept the lights on. That has changed. Today a row of air-conditioned sheds full of servers decides where the world’s data lives, how fast it travels, and who gets to control it. Industry estimates suggest data centers and the digital economy they support could push India’s internet economy past $ one trillion by 2030. That figure comes from a widely cited Google-Bain-Temasek projection. It is a real slice of the Viksit Bharat ambition. If the trajectory holds, data centers will not merely support India’s climb. They will drive it from the front. The numbers India’s operational data center capacity stands at roughly 1.3 to 1.6 GW today. It is spread across more than 160 facilities. Several hundred more megawatts are under construction. The market was worth about $10 billion in 2025. It is projected to more than double to $21-22 billion in four to five years. It translates to a compound annual growth rate of close to 13.5 per cent. The capacity expansion story is sharper. From under two GW today, India’s capacity is expected to grow four to five times by 2030. Some estimates go as high as eight GW. That ceiling may not hold for long. Consider AirTrunk. The Australian hyperscale operator, backed by Blackstone and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board entered India in April this year by acquiring Lumina CloudInfra. The deal handed it a pipeline of about 600 MW across Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, with development potential of up to $ 5 billion. Six weeks later it announced something far larger: more than ₹ 3 lakh crore roughly $ 30 billion to build over five GW capacity in India by 2030. Maharashtra has already exchanged a letter of intent for land at Raigad Pen Growth Centre where AirTrunk is planning three GW campus. If even part of that materializes, eight GW starts to look conservative. Nearly $ 70 billion investment is in motion. Another $ 90 billion has been announced. Those are government figures, released alongside Union Budget’s long-term tax framework for cloud and data centres income. That framework runs all the way to 2047. The intent is twofold: give investors certainty and formally place data centres alongside power and transport as national infrastructure. Who is building, and where Mumbai is still the capital of India’s data centre map. It accounts for nearly half of all operational capacity. Chennai follows with about 18 per cent. Delhi-NCR has 11 per cent. The more interesting movement is in the second rung. Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru and now Lucknow are climbing fast. Hyderabad alone is expected to add 1,000 to 1,200 MW by 2030. That would rival Mumbai’s own expansion. States are competing hard for the money. Telangana has signed MoUs worth over ₹10,500 crore for AI data centre clusters. Rajasthan is chasing ₹20,000 crore. Uttar Pradesh is courting ₹30,000 crore for eight new data center parks. The builders are a mix. Indian infrastructure players are laying the physical groundwork: AdaniConneX, Yotta Infrastructure, NTT DATA, CtrlS, Nxtra by Airtel, Sify, and ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, which has partnered with Tata and pledged $3.2 billion for 550 MW. AirTrunk joins them as the newest entrant. Hyperscalers are writing the biggest cheques. Google has committed $ 15 billion over five years during 2026 – 30, for India’s first gigawatt-scale AI hub, built with AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel. Amazon Web Services has pledged roughly $ 12.7 billion nationally including $ 8.2 billion in Maharashtra. Microsoft has earmarked close to $ three billion. The largest single development so far is Blackstone and Panchshil Realty’s 500 MW campus in Navi Mumbai. It carries an investment of over ₹20,000 crore, spans 14 buildings and three million square feet and is designed to run on up to 65 per cent renewable power. The power problem Here is the part that rarely makes headlines. It will decide everything else. Data centers are enormously power-hungry. India’s grid has never been asked to deliver electricity at this scale, for this purpose, before. Globally, data center electricity demand is projected to more than double by 2030, to roughly 945 terawatt-hours. That is more than Japan’s entire annual consumption, according to International Energy Agency. AI is the main driver. Training a large model means thousands of GPUs running without pause for weeks. AI servers can draw up to ten times the power of conventional ones. A modern AI-focused facility may need 80 MW or more. A standard one needs about 32 MW. As India moves from under two GW to a possible eight GW, electricity demand rises with it. And most of that supply must be constant. Round the clock. Uninterrupted. This is the catch with renewables. Solar and wind are intermittent. Data centers cannot tolerate intermittency. They

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Leadership Technology
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1.12K

Much ado about something

Digital India bill should democratize information highways, digital ecosystem, address stakeholders concerns & not limit benefits to a big few Prachi Mishra In a few days from now, Narendra Modi government is likely to come up with first draft of the much-awaited Digital India Bill. If one were to go by officials, the bill is intended at strengthening information technology, security and information infrastructure in India. The Bill, when finally adopted by Parliament and enacted, will complement the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 and Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022. In last two decades, after IT Act, 2000 became operative there have been astronomical developments in technological innovation. To keep pace with these innovations, the act’s regulatory framework was amended. The IT Act Amendment of 2008 and IT Rules 2011 were rolled out to define cyberspace and provided ground for handling of digital activities in India. But, the Act was inadequate to address present-day concerns of cyber security, crime and do justice to privacy concerns of Indian people. Emergence of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Quantum technologies, Metaverse, Big Data, Block chain, etc has thrown up new challenges in the regulatory framework. Given the limitations within the existing IT Act, a separate act has been in the work for a few months to address the growing digital and cyber demands of Indian people. In this backdrop, India’s economic interests can be furthered when the technological development and innovation apart from related regulatory framework is aligned. With growing penetration of digital technologies and increasing vulnerabilities of cyberspace, there is a need to ensure India’s national security was primacy. Reportedly, Digital India Bill, 2023 is intended at catering to India’s rising aspirations and become a catalyst in her growth and development while upholding people’s fundamental rights and country’s security concerns. Given the delicate balance that needs to be achieved through the new framework, the expectations from various stakeholders may have to be enlisted. Firstly, the Bill may have to address ethical concerns that are emerging as a consequence of disruptive technologies. Technological development will have to be seen as being morally correct, legitimate, and ethical. For instance, India should be able to address and counter adverse impact of artificial intelligence like deep fakes and misinformation. The new framework may evolve a robust and holistic mechanism to address issues related to cyber security. In 2022, as per CERT-in data, there were over 1.39 million cyber-attacks on India. This roughly over 253 per cent more than suck attacks reported for 2018. Hence, the Bill should put in mechanisms to resolve high volume and velocity of these cyber-attacks seen across sector, be it finance, banking, security establishment to political theatre.  Also, with highly disruptive Quantum technologies round the corner, the Bill must suggest ways to ensure cyber security in the new environment. The proposed bill may have to find solution to tackle the manifold rise in misinformation, hateful content and fake news that’s become the new normal in India. In last couple of years, big technology firms like Facebook and Twitter have been at loggerheads with the government on dealing with mis-formation on their respective platforms. The Bill will have to reflect a possible consensus of all stakeholders on dealing with misinformation, disinformation and fake news that’s rampant. The bill’s provisions should be aligned with innovation. At present, India’s patent tally is dismal and most technology is imported from the Western countries. Be it hardware or software, India’s patents fall behind big time. The Bill should give impetus and incentivize innovation in digital technologies. Additionally, it should augur well for all the stakeholders of digital ecosystem and not restrict the benefits disproportionately to a handful tech firms. The new dispensation may have to address issues like liability, accountability, and ownership of data and its usage. Of late, there have been cases where social unrest resulted in violence and arson because content guidelines for these platforms were amiss. Or, even the existing norms were violated. The Digital India Bill, 2023 will be discussed at a time when India has moved many notches above in many different fields of technological and digital innovation. Being home to 113 unicorns and third largest start-up economy, India’s innovation ecosystem is booming like never before. Also, with the Semiconductor Mission, the strong impetus on adopting digital technologies, and the National Quantum Mission in place, India is bound to grow steadily in the coming years. Stakeholders expect the bill to empower them, democratize the information high way and digital ecosystem, aid other relevant economic policies. India should ensure that all voices of the entire stakeholder ecosystem are heard and it is enacted in time. (Author is Research Consultant at Centre for Integrated & Holistic Studies, New Delhi based non-partisan think tank)

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