Hughes Network to expand sat-broadband in India
July 21, 2020
By Chris Forrester
EchoStar-owned Hughes Network Systems is to launch a consumer broadband-by-satellite service for India.
June 2020 saw India’s government relaxing its former tight controls on all things connected to satellite, including space services such as satellite launching, rockets and similar services.
“The lesson for us is we need to get into the HughesNet consumer service in India quickly. Hughes is relatively buffered in this whole thing, we should definitely quickly get that. I would say that that’s learning that somehow we have to get into the satellite consumer broadband segment in India,” Shivaji Chatterjee, senior VP and business head- Enterprise, Hughes Communications India, told news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).
“Globally in the satellite market there are a lot of capacities available, and a lot of markets are also restricted like China and Russia, etc. So a lot of operators are ready to relocate capacity to India,” Chatterjee added, saying that Hughes was working with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
ISRO is slated to launch its GSAT-20 satellite later this month which is expected to offer 60-70 Gb/s of capacity and is some 10-times more powerful than any other ISRO craft.