Satellite Broadband Set To Revolutionise Digital Inclusion In Remote Areas

The technological developments in the past two decades have led to a mammoth surge in the telecom base the world over, and especially in India where the number of internet subscribers grew from 16.5 million in 2002 to 658 million today. Yet, as of July 2022, over 750 million Indians do not have access to proper broadband services.

While as a nation we are at the cusp of cutting-edge 5G-6G/ICT/IMT services becoming a part of our lives in the urban areas, difficult terrains, poor telecommunication infrastructure and low returns for the telecom companies hinder the inclusion of a large population in underserved regions, particularly the deep rural/remote areas. This lack of internet penetration is, in turn, reinforcing the massive youth migration, geographical isolation, and lack of economic resources in the rural areas on top of the former social inequalities. This is further affecting education, healthcare and national economy while maintaining the status quo on “Digital Divide” and diminishing the impact of the government’s digitally driven schemes and initiatives.

The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced that the internet is no longer a luxury, appropriately pushing it to be categorised as a public utility, and providing greater access to information and educational resources which mobilises the socio-economic status of the region and brings cheaper prices and tariffs for all sorts of goods and amenities.

The pandemic had several silver linings as well. It brought about a transformation in traditional banking and healthcare systems. It accelerated the adoption of digital banking services including UPI or Unified Payments Interface, an advanced mobile app-based payment system which transformed daily transactions by lowering costs and improving its overall quality. Similarly, we also saw over 884 million online registrations in the CoWin App for vaccinations.

But the digital inaccessibility and illiteracy has prevented these services from seamlessly reaching ‘the last Indian’. This digital divide needs to be overcome through fiberisation and improved terrestrial communication infrastructure, as a large part of the nation remains unconnected. 

According to the World Bank and ITU statistics, an increase of 10 per cent in broadband penetration is directly proportional to 0.8-1.5 per cent in the nation’s GDP. As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s performance indicator report, only 37 per cent of the rural population has access to basic internet connectivity.

The challenges of terrestrial networking have seen more remote rural areas left out from faster bandwidth internet, thus further forcing telecom companies to concentrate their broadband resources on urban and sub-urban centres only. This bottleneck has concurrently established the fact that broadband is a crucial technology that not only ensures connectivity to underserved regions, but also has a conclusive impact on the digital inclusion of the citizens at state, national and international levels.

Satcom solutions
Satellite communication (satcom) systems have been identified as one of the most promising solutions to tackle the territorial barriers in rural area due to their grander global coverage. The advent of millimeter-wave technology (28 GHz and beyond) and the much-needed privatisation of the space industry under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi has led to advantages like decreasing launch costs, state-of-the-art satellite technology. This intensifying private-sector interest has created various startups to revolutionise and provide satcom IoT (Internet of Things) services which the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites (altitude between 500-2,000 km) can cater to and efficiently provide affordable broadband services in remote areas.

These low-earth constellations can also be used for enhancing the blue economy’s contribution to the country’s GDP which would snowball into better socio-economic status of the coastline-based rural communities. Not only that India’s unique peninsula poses various maritime challenges and can help in various disaster management activities.

According to BharatNet Project, currently there are 1,04,664 gram panchayats (GPs), out of which only 53,600 GPs have functioning Wi-Fi capacity. Thus satellite-based communications, potentially combining with existing government policies in various domains of public life, will play a major role in this digital transition. There are several pre-requisites for a successful digital inclusivity, such as proper infrastructure, skill development and an affordable service to the common man. Hence, the ‘fiberisation of space’ becomes a much-needed ask as the satcom industry has to be a co-traveler with the existing terrestrial networks and expanding its footprint in the nooks and corners of the country. The DoT must carefully consider the needs of satellite and IMT uses in their respective markets and associated trade-offs in terms of economic value and opportunity costs involved while deciding on the future allocation of the 28 GHz band, as it is going to be vital for the satcom services in remote regions.

The nascent satellite broadband ecosystem would require immense support from the Universal Service Obligation Fund or USOF (proposed to be expanded as Telecommunication Development Fund or TDF in the draft Indian Telecommunication Bill 2022). To provide resilient connectivity for difficult geographies where fiberisation is not possible, fix backhauls and R&D of the next-gen satellite systems, the satcom industries need to be incentivised and subsidised so that the consumers can get state-of-the-art facilities like low latency, high capacity and high-speed services in difficult geographies.

To conclude, an enabling environment for ubiquitous internet access across the nation would require amalgamation of terrestrial communication systems with state-of-the-art satellite communication systems. This venture must be supported by policies and initiatives from the government and with apropos collaboration that will not only offer robustness to urban areas and also bridge the digital gap.

                                                                       Author

Lt. Gen. A.K. Bhatt, Director General, Indian Space Association