Musk vows affordable Starlink in India as feud with Ambani escalates
Days before Jio's record IPO, Elon Musk stepped up his clash with Mukesh Ambani, saying Starlink must be affordable in India. The government denies favoring anyone.
Symbolic image · Photo: Ka23 13 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Elon Musk said on Saturday that SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service would be priced affordably in India. "Obviously, if Starlink is too expensive in India, no one will buy it, so SpaceX will need to make pricing affordable," he wrote on X, according to Reuters. He gave no prices, adding that "Ambani's profits will be lower, but he is not going out of business."
Late on Friday, Musk addressed Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as "Prime Minister Ambani" and asked whether he would "consider allowing Starlink to compete." Musk has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government and Ambani of stalling Starlink's entry to favor Reliance Jio, a sharp shift for a businessman who long enjoyed warm ties with Modi.
India's government denies any bias, saying three satellite ventures, including Starlink and Jio's own, are awaiting final security clearance. The dispute comes days before the initial public offering of Jio Platforms, set to be India's largest ever at a targeted valuation of $106 billion. Mobile data in India costs about 8 cents per gigabyte; Reliance did not respond to the remarks.