Geopolitical convergence on terrestrial broadcasting

On March 27, 2019, as India was heading into general elections, a special address to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi caught the attention of geopolitical observers across the globe. India had successfully tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon as part of a programme labelled "Mission Shakti" as a deterrent against threats to our critical satellite infrastructure.

It is interesting that five years on as we head into the general elections once again, anti-satellite technology has become the focus of geopolitical conversations. The vulnerability of satellites to geopolitical conflicts raises a critical need for multiple strategic technology alternatives for what have become everyday applications from geospatial positioning to broadcasting and now even the Internet.

India's technology trajectory over the decades has been unique and distinctive from most of the advanced West and perhaps even China. In India, we have seen tech evolution happen in leaps and bounds where we have often skipped intermediate steps of incremental evolution.

In the case of telephony, the leapfrog to cellular phones has not only connected more than a billion citizens but also paved the way for one of the largest markets for mobile devices in its scale. Similar has been the trajectory of TV with the leapfrog to satellite television that rendered the terrestrial broadcasting infrastructure redundant and obsolete while paving the way for one of the most competitive broadcast media markets with over 800 satellite channels. With some of the lowest price points for mobile data in the world, India's leapfrog within the digital economy has again been along a unique and distinctive path not weighed down by legacy business models, thus giving it the agility necessary to introduce innovations at scale.