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In an ironic turn of events, HCI (Hughes Communication India) has recently collaborated with ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) to launch India’s first-ever high-throughput satellite. This recent move by ISRO and HCI, known for providing satellite and terrestrial media solutions to government and businesses, has acted as an exit card to other established foreign communication companies from India.
HCI has been working on this mega project by testing its operations in Northern India since last year. This tie-up has assured to cater high-speed broadband service to remote areas in India.
Key takeaways
- Hughes Communication India(HCI) is a popular joint venture company between Hughes Network Systems (US-based) and Bharti Airtel (Indian Telecom Operator). HCI recently launched the first high throughput satellite broadband internet service in India via their tie-up with ISRO.
- The ISRO-HCI collaboration was announced to the media in a launch session facilitated by Dr. S Somnath (Chairman of ISRO).
- In the same media session, the senior Vice-president of HCI, Mr. Shivaji Chaterjee, claimed that the service has the massive capacity to facilitate internet connection with bandwidth up to 100 Mbps.
- The service offered post collaboration will provide satellite-catered internet to remote areas in India. They will use the GSAT-11 and GSAT-29 which are the most powerful satellites of ISRO.
- Both GSAT-11 and GSAT-29 were launched in 2018 by ISRO to facilitate higher bandwidth connectivity to fellow Indian clients in the space enterprise.
- Given the powerful collaboration, the newly launched high throughput satellite broadband service caters to high-speed internet connectivity to regions in India that are inaccessible to the terrestrial network.
ISRO has collaborated with Hughes Communication India (HCI)
Soon to act as a blessing to the lower connectivity remote areas in India, the collaboration between space enterprise and research magnates ISRO and HCI is finally taking place. In a recent media event, ISRO and HCI made their tie-up public. The event commenced with Dr. S Somnath, the chairman of ISRO, assuring that their service is of much higher capacity than the existing internet services.
He said, “Our service will have an average bandwidth of around 10 Mbps since such speeds are what is required in the markets that we are targeting, Capacity-wise, we can go much higher, if there is industry demand for it.”
Dr. S Somnath also went on and affirmed that the internet service that is going to be provided after the collaboration was already put to test for the past year in low-bandwidth areas in India. The connectivity test was being run in remote areas of Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. These hilly regions have difficult terrain that often leads to barriers in physical and terrestrial internet connectivity. The tie-up launch is set to expand Hughes’ HTS ( high throughput satellite) service all across India.
Hughes-ISRO Collaboration Leads to Exit Of Starlink
After the commercial launch of the Hughes-ISRO collaboration in the media event in New Delhi, the exit gates for Starlink were open. Elon Musk-owned Starlink, which is a satellite constellation operated by SpaceX, recently terminated its operations in India after failing to get all the official approvals. This means India is now focused entirely on this recent tie-up and is not looking for any foreign space enterprise to take over its satellite operations.
The HCI-ISRO collaboration in its true spirit went easily to Vocal for Local. The chairman of ISRO, Dr. S Somnath, said, “ At ISRO, we are committed to exploring and expanding the ways we can work with the private sector to help improve people’s lives and bridge the digital divide.” The internet services after the collaboration are aimed to deliver high-speed broadband connectivity throughout India. This also includes the most remote areas that have been beyond the reach of terrestrial networks.
Hughes-ISRO Tie-up Is All Set To Launch India’s first High-Throughput Satellite (HTS)
In the media event, Hughes and ISRO jointly launched India’s first-ever high-throughput satellite broadband service. In simple terms, HTS is satellite connectivity that provides higher connectivity bandwidth. The increased bandwidth thus increases the amount of data that can be transferred between a ground station and a satellite. This means the regional areas in India that experienced connectivity issues, will now get access to high-speed internet, unlike the low-quality terrestrial networks.
The conventional satellite that was used before the collaboration had many shortcomings. For instance, they had low bandwidth and higher latency of connectivity. At the launch event, Mr. Shivaji Chaterjee, Vice-President of HCI claimed the internet service is expected to provide bandwidth between 2-10 Mbps.
What does "made in India" mean?
The executive vice of Hughes India, Shivaji Chatterjee, claimed that the firm was sincerely committed to the Make in India initiative project. The satellites are Indian, the executive vice president added. However, a significant number of the company’s products are manufactured in India. Reliance Jio’s outside transmitter, the complete infrastructure, and other equipment are currently all manufactured in India. The Indian company manufactures both the antennas and the arrays completely. The SD-WAN and Indian Oil initiatives are also both created in India.
