Qualcomm plans to increase connectivity in rural India via satellite

The Dollar Business Bureau 

The electronics and chips manufacturer, Qualcomm plans to increase its consumer base in rural India through satellite communication. This was discussed by the company’s executive chairman Paul Jacobs during his meeting with the Minister of Communications Manoj Sinha and Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday. 

After the meeting Paul told the media that Qualcomm had recently invested in a satellite company OneWeb, which is building 700 satellites and planning to launch them by 2019-20. “Satellite communication would provide mobile broadband to most remote areas of the country and will have connectivity from a terminal on the ground, up through sky into the rest of the network.” The funding for the satellite company was being done through crowd-funding from companies such as Intelsat, Virgin and Airbus Group, while the second round of fund-raising was in the process as the process of building the technology is estimated to cross $1 billion. Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises also had a minority stake in OneWeb in June 2015. 

Jacobs was confident that India would play a defining role not only in developing a mobile ecosystem but also in designing devices and manufacturing them.

The IT minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad also said that he had asked that the resources of Qualcomm should be deployed to developing digital content in the widely spoken regional languages of the country.