Starlink is still waiting on final security clearance to launch in India. Credit: Starlink
Elon Musk asked on X on Thursday whether “Ambani” is “the real boss of India,” escalating his fight over Starlink’s stalled launch in the country hours after India’s government insisted its satellite rules treat every operator the same.
“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 wrote at 6:25 a.m. PT. He was quote-posting a user who accused the government of protecting “crony capitalists.” He didn’t say which Ambani he meant, but Mukesh Ambani chairs Reliance Industries, the owner of Jio, India’s largest mobile carrier.
Thursday’s post was his second swing in two days. On Wednesday, after Starlink executive Lauren Dreyer told India Mobile Congress that the company stands ready to serve India, Musk wrote that Starlink is “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He added: “You can guess who they are.” Later that day he denied reports that a Starlink kit recovered in Manipur had been used by militants, saying Starlink beams “are turned off over India.”
New Delhi had already responded by the time Musk named anyone. In a statement released through the Press Information Bureau at 9:19 a.m. India time on Thursday (8:49 p.m. PT Wednesday), the Ministry of Communications said a social media post was suggesting its satellite framework “is being applied in a discriminatory manner.” It didn’t name Musk.
The ministry said three satellite operators hold Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) licences, and each must prove it meets security conditions meant “to ensure safety of all users and their data.” “Security assessment as part of this process is currently under way in respect of all the three licensees,” the statement reads. Only after that review can an operator seek spectrum, and “at present, all the three entities are at broadly the same regulatory stage.” It called the discrimination claim “baseless and misconceived.”
The release doesn’t name the three licensees, but they are Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio Satellite Communications, Reliance’s joint venture with SES. If the ministry is right, Ambani’s own satellite business is waiting at the same gate, which cuts against the oligarch theory.
Starlink’s push into India goes back at least to 2021, when the government ordered SpaceX to stop taking Indian preorders. Starlink won its GMPCS licence in June 2025 and authorization from space regulator IN-SPACe the following month. In May 2025, telecom regulator TRAI recommended assigning satellite spectrum administratively, at 4% of adjusted gross revenue for five years, rather than through the auction Jio had pushed for. Security clearance was still the holdup when SpaceX started hiring in Bengaluru in August.
The company Musk is pointing at is also, on paper, a Starlink partner. In March 2025, Starlink signed distribution deals with Airtel and then Jio, both conditional on Starlink securing its own approvals. Jio said it would sell Starlink hardware in its stores and online.
Reliance and Jio haven’t formally responded. Asked about the allegations at India Mobile Congress, Jio director Akash Ambani declined to comment in an interview with Business Today TV, saying Jio wants to stay focused on Indian consumers. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi quote-posted Musk with “Welcome to India, Elon. Wait till you discover the other guy,” without saying who he meant.
Musk offered no evidence that Reliance has lobbied against Starlink, and the ministry gave no timeline for its security reviews and didn’t say what each operator still has to prove. Nobody has said whether Jio’s Starlink deal still stands, or how commercial spectrum pricing will land.
India says three operators are standing in the same line, and Musk says one of them is quietly holding it up. Whichever service clears security review first should go a long way toward settling whose version holds up.
