With satcom services set to be mainstreamed soon, the government is prioritizing national safeguards in light of the expected overseas dominance of firms such as Elon Musk-owned Starlink, Jeff Bezos-led Amazon Kuiper, and Eutelsat OneWeb.

A second official said the Digital Communications Commission (DCC), an interministerial panel and the highest decision-making body of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has already cleared the proposal to set up the satellite monitoring facility with an outlay of around '930 crore.

Currently, the Indian participation is minimal in the satcom market, particularly in the low-earth orbit (LEO), which is increasingly becoming lucrative from a communications point of view.

With almost 7,000 satellites currently in space, Starlink is the leading company. While Eutelsat OneWeb now has over 600 satellites in orbit, Amazon Kuiper is also expected to have over 3,000. The biggest shareholder in Eutelsat OneWeb, the Bharti Group, has much less capacity than Starlink and what Kuiper will be able to provide in the upcoming years.

Although there isn't now an India LEO satellite operator, officials stated that resources would be set aside for them since they don't want Indian firms to be at a disadvantage when they explore entering in the upcoming years.

According to the new telecom policy's preliminary draft, an efficient regulatory structure must be put in place to protect the nation's interests and sovereign rights while maintaining the best possible orbital and spectrum resources for future Indian satellites, particularly NGSO. Additionally, there would be a framework that would facilitate the global deployment of ground stations as a service (GSaaS) from India. India can serve as a gateway hub for nations that it serves.

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Installing satellite earth station gateways for NGSO systems is a costly and intricate process that requires numerous antennas. As a result, the NGSO operators aim to set up the ideal number of gateways to service different countries worldwide.