TNI Bureau: The Union government has cleared Elon Musk’s Starlink to offer satellite based communication services in India after the company agreed to follow all domestic laws and security rules.

Minister of state for communications Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar said on Sunday that the Department of Telecommunications has granted Starlink a unified license. The company has accepted mandatory conditions which apply to all satellite communication operators in the country. These include setting up earth station gateways in India to route user traffic within national boundaries. No Indian data will be copied or decrypted overseas and user traffic will not be mirrored to servers abroad.

The minister said the services are expected to create jobs in installation operation and maintenance of telecom networks and user equipment. The government has also received recommendations from the telecom regulator on spectrum pricing. Starlink will use Aadhaar authentication for customer verification. The company has capacity to onboard about 20 lakh customers in India.