Sunil Mittal says India must hold the satellite internet 'kill switch' as OneWeb, Jio and Starlink wait for security clearance

Bharti Airtel founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal has said India must keep control of the "kill switch" for satellite communications used on its soil. "The kill switch, as we call it, should not be sitting somewhere else. India must have control over its own space destiny," he told the Press Trust of India in an interview marking 50 years of Bharti Enterprises. Bharti backs Eutelsat OneWeb, one of three companies licensed to offer satellite broadband in India.

A kill switch, in this sense, is the power to cut off, slow down or restrict a satellite network's service for a single terminal, a region or a whole country. In satellite broadband, user dishes talk to satellites, which relay traffic to ground stations and then to the internet, so whoever runs those control systems and gateways can switch users off or reroute their data. Mittal pointed to Ukraine, noting that "if Ukraine is using Starlink, it's also using OneWeb now", and said India should not lean on a single provider: "You can't just depend on one country or one company." He added that the equipment and the communications coming down to the ground should be monitored and that "everything should be routed through India."

The remarks land while the government decides the security conditions for launching satellite broadband. Jio, OneWeb and Starlink all hold licences, and the government has said the three have provisional spectrum, are at a similar stage, and need security clearance before they can launch. As The Hindu explains, a licence on its own does not allow commercial service; spectrum assignment and security compliance must come first.

Mittal said OneWeb is ready. According to The Hindu, he said its ground infrastructure has been in place for three years and its satellites have been over India for five. He said the government occasionally uses OneWeb terminals for emergency services, and that economic adviser Sanjeev Sanyal streamed through one on a boat trip to Oman. "We have satisfied all their needs, and we just now wait for their signal," he said.

He also argued that satellites will add to, not replace, mobile and fibre networks, because they are expensive and need replacing every five or six years. The case for them is coverage in the "dark spots" that remain in remote villages, forests, mountains, at sea and in the air. For India's digital economy, who holds the switch on those links is now as much a security question as a business one.