Elon Musk’s satellite broadband company is facing a comparison it almost certainly did not want. On October 13, 2026, Eurasia Review published an analysis titled “Elon Musk’s Starlink Must Go The Huawei Way”, arguing that India should treat Starlink with the same security-first skepticism it once applied to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The piece lands at an awkward moment for SpaceX: its Indian subsidiary, Starlink Satellite Communications Pvt. Ltd., has held an operating licence since June 2025, yet it still cannot sign up a single paying customer because two approvals, security clearance and spectrum assignment, remain unresolved.
The timing matters. Musk has spent the past week publicly needling the Indian government over the holdup, and officials in New Delhi have pushed back just as loudly. Into that fight steps Eurasia Review with a framing that could shape how Indian policymakers, and possibly policymakers elsewhere, think about satellite internet as a national-security question rather than a telecom-rollout question. This is what is confirmed, what is still speculation, and what it means for anyone watching the satellite internet market heading into 2027.
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What Eurasia Review’s Analysis Actually Argues
Eurasia Review’s piece centers on a simple comparison: Huawei was locked out of Western 5G networks over fears that a Chinese-state-linked company could not be trusted with critical communications infrastructure, so why should a company controlled by a single, geopolitically unpredictable billionaire get an easier pass for satellite infrastructure that reaches directly into Indian homes, farms, and border regions. The analysis names Starlink, its parent SpaceX, and Starlink Satellite Communications Pvt. Ltd. directly, and it draws the Huawei parallel explicitly in its headline.
It is worth being precise about what the article does and does not claim. It is an argument for caution, not a report of an actual Indian government decision to ban Starlink the way several countries restricted Huawei network equipment. No Indian ministry has announced a Huawei-style exclusion of Starlink, and nothing in the current record confirms that one is coming. The piece is best read as commentary that could influence the debate in New Delhi, rather than as confirmation that the debate has already been settled.
The Timeline: How Starlink Got Here
Starlink Satellite Communications Pvt. Ltd. received its Indian licence to launch satellite internet services in June 2025, a milestone SpaceX and its supporters treated as the hard part. In practice, an Indian satellite communications licence is only the entry ticket. Two further steps, security clearance from India’s security agencies and formal spectrum assignment from the Department of Telecommunications, have to clear before any commercial service can switch on. Sixteen months after the licence was granted, both remain outstanding, according to the reporting that Eurasia Review’s analysis responds to.
That gap between “licensed” and “operating” is not unique to Starlink. It also applies to Jio Satcom and Eutelsat OneWeb, the other two companies that hold Indian satellite internet licences. All three are, as of this reporting, still waiting on the same two gates.
Security Clearance and Spectrum: The Two Missing Pieces
India’s Minister for Communications, Jyotiraditya Scindia, has laid out the sequencing directly. He said India does “not allow monopoly” in the sector and framed licensing as only the first of several conditions a company must clear before it can sell service. “We are very clear on our stand. There are three parties that have got a licence. As and when the government decides the charge system on a revenue basis, that spectrum will be assigned to them, and as and when they individually fulfil the security conditions, then they can start operations,” Scindia said, according to ThePrint.
That statement confirms two things that matter for anyone trying to track this story: spectrum has not yet been priced or assigned to any of the three licensees, and security clearance is being evaluated company by company rather than issued as a blanket approval. Neither process has a published completion date.
More Than 10 Operators, Only Three Licences
One number from the Indian government cuts through a lot of the noise around this story: officials have said that more than 10 satellite operators, including “the licensed Starlink,” have entered the Indian market in some form. That is a far bigger pool than the handful of companies most coverage focuses on, and it suggests India is managing a much wider queue of satellite ambitions than the Musk-versus-New-Delhi framing implies.
Within that larger pool, only three companies currently hold an actual operating licence: Starlink, Jio Satcom, and Eutelsat OneWeb. India’s Ministry of Communications has said plainly that all three are going through the same review. “Security assessment as part of this process is currently under way in respect of all the three licensees,” the ministry said, according to the Times of India. That framing cuts against any narrative that Starlink specifically is being singled out, at least on paper, since Reliance-backed Jio Satcom is undergoing the identical process.
Musk vs. New Delhi: The War of Words
Musk has not stayed quiet about the delay. “Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and requirement of the government of India, so why still no license?” Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, wrote in a public post, according to Tesla North. The remark implies Starlink has been pursuing Indian market entry since roughly 2021, well before the company received its licence in June 2025, and it frames India as an outlier relative to the rest of Starlink’s global footprint.
SpaceX has also tried to pre-empt the security argument directly rather than waiting for regulators to raise it. Lauren Dreyer, SpaceX’s Vice President of Legal and Business Operations, said the company built its India operations around local compliance from the start. “We’ve built our Starlink operations specifically for India in recognition of Indian security requirements and other regulations, establishing controls at every layer for India, and keeping Indian user data within India,” Dreyer said, as reported by India Today. That statement is effectively SpaceX’s answer to the Huawei comparison before Eurasia Review’s piece even ran: data localization and India-specific controls, the company argues, are already built in.
India’s Rebuttal: “Baseless and Misconceived”
New Delhi has not taken Musk’s framing quietly either. After Musk suggested that entrenched domestic business interests, which he described as oligarchs, were blocking Starlink’s entry, India’s government rejected the characterization outright. “India’s regulatory framework for satellite communication services is fair and non-discriminatory,” the Ministry of Communications said, according to the same Times of India report that carried the ministry’s security-assessment statement.
The government’s position, in short, is that the process is slow because it is thorough and applied evenly, not because it is aimed at any one company. Whether that holds up is precisely the question Eurasia Review’s analysis puts pressure on: a uniform process that happens to take this long, on a technology this geopolitically sensitive, can look a great deal like a de facto ban even without anyone ever calling it one.
The Huawei Playbook, Explained
Why Governments Restricted Huawei
To understand why Eurasia Review reaches for the Huawei comparison, it helps to recall what actually happened to Huawei. Starting in the late 2010s, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and several other governments restricted or banned Huawei network equipment from their 5G infrastructure, citing fears that a company so closely tied to the Chinese state could be compelled to build in surveillance access or could simply not be trusted with critical communications hardware during a period of rising US-China tension. Huawei denied any such risk, but the restrictions stuck across most of the Western world regardless.
The comparison Eurasia Review draws is not about equipment sourcing, since Starlink is an American company, not a Chinese one. It is about the underlying logic: that a government should weigh who controls a piece of critical communications infrastructure, and how predictable and accountable that controller is, before granting it access to the national network, regardless of where the company is headquartered.
Why the Comparison Makes Starlink Nervous
Applying that Huawei-era logic to Musk is a provocative move, and it is exactly what makes the Eurasia Review piece notable rather than routine. Musk runs a company that touches national airwaves, sits increasingly close to the US government’s own satellite and defense priorities, and has shown a willingness to use platform access as leverage in public disputes, as his own social media posts about India illustrate. For Indian officials weighing the Huawei parallel, the open question is not whether Musk is a foreign adversary in the way Huawei was framed, but whether a single, highly influential individual controlling satellite connectivity into Indian territory is itself the kind of concentrated, hard-to-predict control that security reviews exist to screen for.
Market Impact: What’s at Stake for SpaceX and Rivals
India represents one of the largest unconnected or underconnected populations on earth, particularly in rural and mountainous regions where fiber and cell towers are not economical to build. For SpaceX, Indian market entry is less about a single quarter of revenue and more about proving Starlink’s model works at the scale of a market with well over a billion people, a proof point that matters for every other large, bureaucratically complex market Starlink still has to negotiate.
A prolonged delay, or worse, a quiet effective freeze dressed up as an ongoing review, would hand real-world advantage to Jio Satcom, the Reliance-backed entrant with obvious home-field incumbency, and to Eutelsat OneWeb, which has its own security-review clock running but fewer of the geopolitical complications that come with Musk’s public profile. It would also feed a broader argument, one RCR Wireless has examined in looking at Musk’s long-term strategy for Starlink, that SpaceX’s satellite internet ambitions increasingly double as leverage in telecom and spectrum policy fights well beyond any single country.
Competitive Landscape in Indian Satellite Internet
The table below summarizes where each of India’s three licensed satellite internet operators stands as of this reporting, based on statements from Minister Scindia and the Ministry of Communications.
| Operator | Indian Licence Status | Outstanding Steps | Parent / Backer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starlink Satellite Communications Pvt. Ltd. | Licensed since June 2025 | Security clearance; spectrum assignment | SpaceX / Elon Musk |
| Jio Satcom | Licensed | Security clearance; spectrum assignment | Reliance Jio |
| Eutelsat OneWeb | Licensed | Security clearance; spectrum assignment | Eutelsat Group |
| Other applicants | Unlicensed or pending | Earlier-stage review | Reported as “more than 10” operators total, per the Indian government |
The table makes a point that often gets lost in headlines pitting Musk against India: this is not a one-company dispute. It is a three-way regulatory bottleneck that happens to be most visible in Starlink’s case because Musk is the only one of the three licensees willing to argue about it in public.
Starlink’s Global Footprint vs. Its Indian Holdup
Musk’s own framing, that Starlink operates in more than 165 countries while still waiting on India, is useful for understanding the scale of the mismatch he is pointing to. The table below lays out what is actually confirmed about the India situation set against that global claim.
| Data Point | Status |
|---|---|
| Countries where Starlink says it holds a licence, per Musk | More than 165 |
| Time Musk says Starlink has been pursuing Indian approval | About five years |
| Indian operating licence granted | June 2025 |
| Security clearance status | Still under review, per the Ministry of Communications |
| Spectrum assignment status | Not yet priced or assigned, per Minister Scindia |
| Total satellite operators reported to have entered India | More than 10, per the Indian government |
Read together, the two tables show a company that has cleared the regulatory bar almost everywhere else in the world running into a market where the bar is still being defined in real time, for three companies simultaneously, with no published end date.
Historical Context: Satellite Internet Has Always Been Geopolitical
Low earth orbit broadband was never going to be treated as a purely commercial telecom product, and India’s caution fits a pattern playing out globally. Research groups tracking the space sector have flagged similar dynamics elsewhere: Merics has documented how China treats its own satellite internet constellations as dual-use infrastructure, serving both civilian and state strategic purposes, which is part of why rival governments increasingly view any large satellite internet operator, regardless of nationality, through a security lens rather than a pure connectivity lens.
Starlink’s engineering momentum has not slowed while the India dispute plays out. The company continues to report rapid technical growth globally, including disclosures about the sheer scale of its IPv6 address allocation that The Register covered in late 2025, underscoring that the India standoff is a regulatory problem layered on top of a network that is still expanding capacity everywhere it is allowed to operate.
Why This Dispute Matters Beyond India
India is not the only large market where satellite internet operators are running into a security-first review process rather than a straightforward commercial approval. The same questions Eurasia Review raises about Starlink in India, who controls the infrastructure, how accountable that controller is to the host government, and what happens if the relationship between company and country sours, apply just as easily to any government weighing a satellite internet licence from any single foreign operator. If India does end up treating Starlink the way some Western governments treated Huawei, even informally through an extended review rather than a formal ban, it would give other large, security-conscious markets a template for slow-walking satellite internet approvals without ever having to announce a rejection.
That precedent would cut against Musk’s own argument. His case rests on consistency: Starlink has cleared licensing hurdles in more than 165 countries, so an extended holdup in India looks like an exception rather than the norm. But if India’s approach becomes a model other governments copy, especially ones with similarly large populations and similarly sensitive borders, the “we’re licensed everywhere else” argument loses some of its force. It stops being proof that Starlink is broadly trusted and starts looking like proof that smaller or less security-sensitive markets simply had less at stake when they said yes.
There is also a commercial angle that extends well past India’s borders. Jio Satcom and Eutelsat OneWeb are not just local competitors, they are backed by companies with their own international satellite ambitions. A slow, security-heavy approval process that domestic or allied-nation operators navigate more smoothly than a US-based, Musk-controlled company would is the kind of regulatory asymmetry that other governments, and other satellite internet rivals, will be watching closely as they plan their own market-entry strategies for 2027 and beyond.
What Happens Next: Five Predictions
- Spectrum pricing, not security clearance, is likely to become the next visible flashpoint, since Minister Scindia has already tied spectrum assignment to an unresolved “charge system on a revenue basis.”
- Expect the security clearance process to move at different speeds for the three licensees, given that Jio Satcom’s domestic ownership gives it a political advantage that Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb do not share.
- Musk will likely continue to litigate the dispute publicly rather than quietly, a pattern consistent with how he has handled regulatory friction in other markets.
- The Huawei framing from Eurasia Review’s analysis is likely to get picked up by Indian commentators and opposition voices even if the government never formally endorses it, simply because it is a ready-made shorthand for “foreign-controlled critical infrastructure.”
- A partial resolution, such as a limited or trial rollout for one region while the broader security review continues, is more probable in the near term than a flat yes-or-no decision on full commercial launch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Eurasia Review’s October 13, 2026 analysis actually argue?
It argued that India should apply the same security-driven scrutiny to Starlink that it, and much of the Western world, applied to Huawei, given the scale of critical communications infrastructure a satellite internet operator controls.
Does Starlink have a licence to operate in India right now?
Yes. Starlink Satellite Communications Pvt. Ltd. received its Indian licence to launch satellite internet services in June 2025.
If Starlink is licensed, why can’t it sell service in India yet?
A licence is only the first step. Starlink still needs security clearance and a formal spectrum assignment before it can launch commercially, and neither has been finalized.
What has Elon Musk said about the delay?
Musk has publicly questioned why Starlink still lacks approval in India despite holding licences in more than 165 other countries and pursuing Indian market entry for roughly five years.
How has the Indian government responded to Musk’s criticism?
India’s Ministry of Communications called claims that the country is unfairly blocking Starlink baseless and misconceived, and said its regulatory framework for satellite communications is fair and non-discriminatory.
Is Starlink the only company waiting on Indian approval?
No. Jio Satcom and Eutelsat OneWeb also hold Indian satellite internet licences and are going through the same security assessment, according to the Ministry of Communications.
Has India actually banned Starlink the way some countries banned Huawei?
No. There is no confirmed Indian government decision to exclude Starlink. The Huawei comparison, at this stage, is an argument made in Eurasia Review’s analysis, not a policy that has been enacted.
How many satellite operators are reported to be pursuing entry into India?
The Indian government has said more than 10 satellite operators, including the licensed Starlink, have entered the Indian market in some capacity, though only three (Starlink, Jio Satcom, and Eutelsat OneWeb) currently hold full operating licences.
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