NEW DELHI: Elon Musk’s Starlink on Monday announced inaugural prices for its satellite venture in India and, as expected, these were many times more than a regular high-speed broadband connection that is currently being provided by terrestrial providers such as Airtel and Reliance Jio.The company put a Rs 8,600 monthly tariff for its satcom services in India, with a hefty additional Rs 34,000 as one-time charge for the requisite hardware.However, as its premium pricing started to create hectic chatter on social media, especially when it’s still some time before it can launch services as the govt continues work on satcom spectrum allocation and its charges, the company withdrew the announcement from its website, blaming a “glitch” for making “dummy test data visible. “The Starlink India website is not live, service pricing for customers in India has not yet been announced, and we are not taking orders from customers in India. There was a config glitch that briefly made dummy test data visible, but those numbers do not reflect what the cost of Starlink service will be in India,” Lauren Dreyer, VP of Starlink Business Operations, said on X. “The glitch was quickly fixed. We’re eager to connect the people of India with Starlink’s high-speed internet, and our teams are focused on obtaining final government approvals to turn service (and the website) on,” she said.Earlier in the day, the company said its India services will “work in all weather” with an “over 99.9% uptime”. It promised that the services are easy to initiate. “Just plug in and start using,” the company said, while promising to provide “unlimited data” and a 30-day trial period.However, the prices – if true – would be a far cry to the dirt-cheap tariffs that Indian internet consumers are used to.On mobile phones, the price per GB of data is less than Rs 10, and monthly packages are under Rs 400 for unlimited 5G mobile data, for example on Airtel. For home broadband on optical fibre, the Sunil Mittal-led company charges just Rs 499 per for a connection which comes with a speed of 40MBPS. Not only this, at Rs 599 per month, they also offer 29 OTT streaming services. The installation charges for home broadband are just Rs 1,500 on Airtel, which itself is an advance payment and can be adjusted in future payments.On the other hand, Reliance Jio’s up to 30 MBPS speed entry-level plan for home broadband costs Rs 399 (excluding GST), with a one-time installation charge of Rs 2,500 (of which Rs 1,500 is refundable security).For Starlink, these are early days and despite giving out the consumer prices (though withdrawn now), the company is not in a position to talk about when it will begin services. This is because there is still no clarity on when the spectrum for satellite communications will be provided by the govt.There are currently discussions, and differences of opinion, between regulator Trai and the department of telecom (DoT) — the nodal ministry on communications matters — regarding the charges that satcom companies need to pay to the govt. Until these issues are resolved, there is no chance of a satcom service beginning consumer services in the country.Starlink, however, is in the process of doing the groundwork for beginning services. It has started hiring in India before services begin commercially while also starting work on setting up the requisite ground infrastructure. Also, it needs to get a final approval from the law-enforcement agencies regarding its infrastructure, including mandated interception and data privacy rules, before beginning any commercial operation.It is believed that while having an aspiration to build its business in India’s urban centres, Starlink will initially find higher takers in rural and mobile unserved areas, apart from specialised use cases in strategic areas such as defence, mining, maritime, and enterprises.