‘Indian Space Association to represent entire sector, will help in development’

The Indian Space Association, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 11, shouldn’t be seen from the lens of an affiliation only for exploring space-based communication, P J Nath, managing director and chief government officer of Tata Group-owned Nelco stated.
“If you look at all the founding members, we are heavily invested in space technology. We are satellite service provider, OneWeb is a satellite operator and so on. The objective of this space association is that it is an industry body which will represent the entire sector. It is not only satellite operators and satellite service providers. It could be manufacturers, R&D (research and development) players, launch vehicles coming in,” Nath informed The Indian Express.
The Indian Space Association, which was formally launched final week, counts amongst its members authorities our bodies akin to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and personal telecom corporations akin to Bharti Airtel’s One Web, Tata Group’s Nelco, L&T, MapMyIndia, and others.
The want for such an affiliation was wanted as a result of there was no unified physique as an entire, Nath stated, including that an trade physique would assist in the general growth of the sector.
“We can carry the voice of the industry body to the government, to the regulator. When you go as as individual company, a lot of times you have your own personal agenda and so many others. You do not get taken that seriously by the government,” Nath stated.

Companies akin to Bharti Airtel, OneWeb, and Nelco, that are among the many founding members of the organisation and are additionally both within the business-to-consumer or business-to-business communications area, can even make use of the affiliation to additional discover and guarantee web connectivity reaches distant areas.
“The good thing about satellite is that the quality of service is the same, whether you give it in Delhi, Mumbai or Arunachal or deep-sea. On a like-to-like basis, fibre has no comparison with satellite internet. Once the neo-satellites come, we will have to see about the price-points, the kind of service and offering for consumers,” Nath stated.
In India, the space-based communications community has taken off with a number of Indian and worldwide corporations betting on it as the subsequent frontier to offer high-speed and inexpensive Internet connectivity to inaccessible areas as effectively. This consists of SpaceX’s StarLink, Sunil Bharti Mittal’s OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, US satellite tv for pc maker Hughes Communications, and many others.