Reliance Jio’s proposal to deploy around 1,600 Low Earth Orbit satellites has been found technically sound by the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre, potentially paving the way for India’s first indigenous LEO satellite constellation. The technical evaluation was carried out jointly by IN-SPACe, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the Wireless Planning and Coordination wing of the Department of Telecommunications, with the proposal assessed as being on par with global systems such as Starlink.
What Jio Is Actually Building
The proposed constellation would position 1,600 to 1,650 satellites at an altitude of approximately 650 kilometres, with roughly 32 satellites visible over any given point at any time, and Jio targeting a rollout within two to three years. The network is designed to deliver approximately 4.5 to 5 terabits per second of data capacity across India, a scale that comfortably outstrips Starlink’s current approved capacity of around 600 gigabits per second over the country, and roughly matches Amazon’s planned LEO network, which is targeting around 3 Tbps but has yet to receive final IN-SPACe authorisation of its own.
Deploying a constellation at this scale is not cheap. Industry estimates put the required investment at $10 to 15 billion, or roughly ₹95,000 crore to ₹1.42 lakh crore, positioning it as among the most consequential bets in Indian space telecommunications history. Reliance has reportedly formed six internal teams covering satellites, launches, payloads and user terminals, and already operates a medium-earth-orbit satellite venture with SES called Orbit Connect India, though those satellites sit too high in orbit to match the low-latency performance LEO systems like Starlink offer.
Clearing the Path for International Orbital Rights
With the technical assessment complete, the government can now extend regulatory support to Jio for securing orbital slots and filing with the International Telecommunication Union, the body that governs global orbital rights and satellite coordination. Jio had specifically sought government assistance with these ITU filings, orbital slot allocation, and coordination with other satellite operators as it advances the project, since orbital slots and spectrum in the increasingly crowded LEO band remain scarce and contested internationally, with China alone having filed for nearly 200,000 satellites at the ITU.
Reports indicate the orbital configuration and technical architecture of Jio’s proposed constellation have been designed to enable future coexistence with another Indian LEO satellite network, suggesting regulators are already planning for a domestic market with more than one homegrown player rather than a single national champion. Jio’s core advantage in this contested field may ultimately come down to distribution rather than orbital slots alone: its retail base of more than 500 million subscribers gives it a ready-made customer pipeline that no rival, foreign or domestic, can currently match in India.
Strategic Stakes Beyond Broadband
Through the initiative, Jio plans to offer fixed satellite broadband, cellular backhaul, and mobile satellite services including direct-to-device connectivity, aimed particularly at improving communications in remote and underserved regions where terrestrial networks remain limited. The company also intends to establish 20 to 22 ground stations across the country to support satellite operations.
IN-SPACe’s observations to the government reportedly went further than pure technical merit, highlighting the strategic significance of a domestically developed constellation for reducing India’s dependence on foreign satellite operators for critical communications infrastructure, alongside its relevance to national security and strategic defence requirements. Senior government officials are said to be holding preliminary discussions on hosting defence payloads on some of the proposed satellites, which would create dual-use infrastructure serving both civilian telecommunications and strategic objectives simultaneously.
The project also arrives at a strategically useful moment for Reliance more broadly, with Jio Platforms widely expected to pursue one of India’s largest IPOs in the coming period, a listing for which a domestically built LEO constellation adds a substantial long-term growth narrative. Industry observers say that if Jio secures the remaining domestic approvals and international orbital clearances, India could establish a meaningful independent presence in the global LEO satellite market for the first time.
