Jio Platforms, the digital and telecommunications arm of Reliance Industries, has announced plans to develop a sovereign low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to extend broadband connectivity to every corner of India. The announcement, made by managing director Akash Ambani at Reliance Industries’ 49th annual general meeting on June 19, coincides with Jio filing draft IPO papers with India’s capital markets regulator.
The company is pursuing a dual-track strategy. In the near term, Jio will lease broadband capacity from existing global satellite constellation operators to accelerate service availability. Simultaneously, it is laying the groundwork for its own Indian-built LEO network, projected to comprise approximately 1,600 to 1,650 satellites operating at an altitude of about 650 kilometers, at an estimated cost of $10 billion to $15 billion.
“Jio connected India on the ground: now, we must connect India from the skies,” Ambani said at the AGM. “There are still the remotest of villages, island communities, and border outposts where Jio network cannot reach. For them, satellite connectivity will be the bridge to the rest of India.”
The connectivity gap
Jio’s terrestrial network has already made it India’s largest telecom operator, with 268 million 5G subscribers and 13 million homes connected through its Jio AirFiber broadband service, which is adding 60,000 new households per day. But vast portions of India’s geography remain beyond the reach of fiber and cellular infrastructure, the Himalayan border regions, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the Thar Desert, and thousands of villages in central and eastern India.
Satellite broadband, delivered from LEO constellations, offers the only practical way to connect these areas without the prohibitive cost of terrestrial infrastructure through difficult terrain.
Competitive landscape and regulatory framework
Jio’s move enters a market where international players have been maneuvering for years. SpaceX’s Starlink won approval from India’s space regulator IN-SPACe in July 2025 but has yet to launch commercial service in the country nearly a year later. Amazon’s Project Kuiper is preparing for deployment later in 2026. Meanwhile, Jio’s domestic rival Bharti Enterprises holds a stake in Eutelsat, the parent company of the OneWeb constellation, currently the only operational LEO broadband network in India.
India’s government has been tightening security requirements for satellite communications. In 2024, it imposed stricter data compliance and sovereignty obligations on satellite service providers, requiring local industry participation and data localization. According to the Economic Times, which first reported details of Jio’s proposal, the government is unlikely to allow inter-satellite laser links on Jio’s constellation, as these would enable data to bypass national borders, a capability Starlink uses to reduce reliance on ground stations.
Direct-to-device and ground infrastructure
The planned constellation is expected to include direct-to-device capability, allowing standard smartphones to connect directly to satellites without specialized hardware. This would be particularly significant for India’s rural population, where smartphone penetration is high but broadband access remains limited.
Jio is also building ground station infrastructure across India, designed to support both partner constellations and its own future satellites. “These ground stations will support our partner constellations, as well our own future satellites, creating an end-to-end satellite broadband ecosystem from space to ground,” Ambani said.
IPO timing and financing
The satellite broadband announcement was paired with Jio’s submission of draft IPO papers, signaling the scale of the investment required. At $10 billion to $15 billion, the projected constellation cost represents one of the largest single investments in India’s space sector. The IPO is expected to provide a significant portion of the capital needed for the buildout.
The dual approach, lease capacity now, build sovereign capability later, mirrors strategies employed by other national telecom operators entering the satellite broadband space, but Jio’s scale and integration with Reliance’s broader technology portfolio make it one of the most ambitious deployments contemplated by any single-country operator.
Strategic implications
If realized, Jio’s constellation would make Reliance the first Indian company to build and operate a large-scale LEO satellite network, a significant milestone for India’s space economy. The government has been actively promoting private sector participation in space since the 2020 space sector reforms, and a homegrown constellation aligns with New Delhi’s push for technological self-reliance, particularly in strategic sectors.
The prohibition on inter-satellite laser links may seem restrictive, but it also ensures that all data traffic remains within India’s regulatory jurisdiction, a condition that global operators like Starlink may also have to accept as the price of accessing the Indian market.