Bharti Airtel is definitely going to be one of the companies that is going to benefit from the arrival of the satellite broadband company, OneWeb. For the unaware, Bharti has a sizeable stake in OneWeb. Thus it won’t be a surprise for many when both Airtel and OneWeb announce that they are partnering to help enhance connectivity services in India. OneWeb’s plan is clear for every country that it enters. The satcom company wants to partner with the telecom operators to help them in expanding the reach of their network. It would be a no brainer for both companies to partner because both are owned by the Bharti group.
Airtel Would Be Able to Give Tough Competition to Jio in Coverage Area
When it comes to providing the best coverage in India, Reliance Jio is always ahead of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi). But with the help of OneWeb, Bharti Airtel would be able to reach areas where Jio can’t even think of going. Airtel could potentially become the telecom operator with the best network coverage in the entire nation. OneWeb and Airtel partnership will help the companies in more than one way. Airtel would also be able to leverage OneWeb’s help with 5G. This partnership will be exciting for everyone involved because this would be the first time that a telecom operator would be working with a satcom company to provide network services. OneWeb’s competitors can potentially partner up with the other telecom operators. But nothing of that sort has surfaced in the industry yet nor is any other satcom company doing such a thing in the foreign lands. But it won’t be unprecedented if say a company like Starlink partners up with Reliance Jio or Vodafone Idea to help them compete with Bharti Airtel which would partner with OneWeb. It will be interesting to see whether OneWeb would also be ready to help Airtel’s competitors including Jio and Vodafone Idea (Vi).
