Musk Told 'Prime Minister Ambani' to Let Starlink Into India

The richest man on Earth just addressed a private citizen as "Prime Minister" — in writing, on his own social network, with a thank-you and a folded-hands emoji at the end. It was not a compliment.

On Friday, Elon Musk published an open letter to "Prime Minister Ambani," accusing Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries, of a "monopolistic exploitation of the great people of India" by keeping Starlink out of the country. New Delhi's response, issued before Musk had even hit post: the claim is "baseless and misconceived."

Strip away the theatre and this is a genuinely important fight. Satellite internet is the last great connectivity land grab — 1.4 billion people, a government that has spent a decade digitising everything, and three licensed operators all stuck in the same regulatory waiting room. Musk has decided the waiting room is a conspiracy. The Indian government says it is paperwork. One of them is about to look very foolish, and the receipts are public.

Photo: Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, in 2014. Musk addressed him this week as "Prime Minister Ambani." Official Government of India photo via Wikimedia Commons (GODL-India licence).

The letter

Here is what Musk actually wrote on X on October 9, and it is worth reading in full because the tone is the story:

"Dear Prime Minister Ambani, Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India. Naturally, you would prefer to maintain your monopolistic exploitation of the great people of India, but would you nonetheless consider allowing Starlink to compete?"

He went on: "There are many areas of India, as there are in all countries, with no Internet access, which denies children the opportunity for education and for small businesses the opportunity to sell their goods to a global market. Starlink would change their lives for the better."

And then, after noting that Starlink has "proven to be essential for saving lives during natural disasters throughout the world," he signed off: "Thank you 🙏"

A sarcastic diplomatic note, an emoji sign-off, and an accusation of monopoly against a man who holds no government office. It is the most Musk thing Musk has done in months — and this time, he picked a fight with the single most powerful businessman in the world's most populous country.

How we got here: four days of escalation

The fuse was lit on Wednesday, October 7. Musk, replying to a user on X, wrote: "Unfortunately, we are being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people. You can guess who they are … This is a crime against the people of India!" He named no one. In a companion post he added that Starlink in India "would enable high-speed, affordable Internet connectivity for those who can't afford current prices or who don't have a connection at all!"

New Delhi moved fast. On Thursday morning, the Ministry of Communications issued a statement saying the satellite-communication rules apply equally to everyone, that security assessments are underway, and that "the suggestion that the framework or its application is unfair or discriminatory is baseless and misconceived." All three licensed operators — Starlink, Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb, and Jio Satellite Communications — are at "broadly the same regulatory stage," the ministry said.

Musk was unmoved. On Thursday evening he named his target: "Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and requirement of the government of India, so why still no license? Is Ambani the real boss of India"

That one detonated in Indian politics. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi replied on X: "Welcome to India, Elon. Wait till you discover the other guy." Musk answered: "Thank you, Rahul. This is indeed troubling." Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy weighed in too, saying India "cannot afford to weaken Brand India globally to appease crony distractions" and should welcome innovative internet solutions.

Then came Friday's "Dear Prime Minister Ambani" letter — and, hours earlier, Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia's rebuttal at an India Mobile Congress press briefing. "India does not allow monopoly in any sector," Scindia said, adding: "Let me set the record straight — for us, the Department of Telecommunications, we are technology agnostic." All three applicants have licences, he said; Amazon's Kuiper must follow the same process; each company must meet security requirements and milestones before commercial services begin.

On Saturday, Musk escalated again — this time with receipts of a sort. He shared screenshots of media reports about Reliance-linked political donations: a 2022 Al Jazeera report on a Reliance-funded firm boosting the BJP's campaigns on Facebook, and an archived Indian Express report that a Reliance-linked company donated Rs 385 crore to the BJP and Rs 25 crore to the Shiv Sena through electoral bonds. The implication was clear. The evidence for the actual claim — that Ambani is personally blocking Starlink — remained exactly where it has been all week: nonexistent.

On Saturday, Musk escalated again

The reality check: everyone is stuck in the same queue

Here is the inconvenient part of Musk's argument. The ministry's "same regulatory stage" claim checks out — and it is bad news for his conspiracy theory, because it means even Ambani's own satellite venture is stuck.

We checked the approvals stack. Starlink applied for its GMPCS licence back in November 2022, received a Department of Telecom letter of intent in May 2025, and was granted the authorisation in June 2025. India's space regulator IN-SPACe cleared its Gen-1 constellation of 4,408 satellites in July 2025. Provisional trial spectrum followed in September 2025. What remains: a second-stage security clearance — lawful interception, data localisation, Indian gateways, a kill-switch capability — plus commercial spectrum assignment and FDI approval, since Starlink's Indian entity is wholly owned by SpaceX.

And here is the kicker: Jio Satellite Communications and Eutelsat OneWeb are waiting on the same final clearances. OneWeb got its IN-SPACe approval in November 2023; the Jio-SES venture got its own in June 2024. Sunil Bharti Mittal said at the same India Mobile Congress this week: "We are waiting for our own approvals." If Ambani were pulling strings to freeze Starlink, he appears to have frozen his own company too — a shoddy basis for a conspiracy.

SpaceX itself told a different story onstage this week. Vice president Lauren Dreyer said at the India Mobile Congress that Starlink has built 20 gateway sites in India with hundreds of antennas, that Indian user data will stay in India, and that the company is "ready to serve India once India is ready." That is the language of a company waiting on process, not a company being sabotaged. UIDAI has even onboarded Starlink for Aadhaar-based subscriber verification, and the company has signed connectivity intents with Gujarat and Goa for remote areas. None of this looks like a blockade. It looks like bureaucracy — which, to be fair to Musk, is its own kind of chokehold.

Photo: Starlink satellites passing overhead in a long-exposure shot. The constellation is licensed in more than 165 countries, per Musk — but commercial service in India still awaits final security clearance and spectrum. CC BY 4.0 photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The old wound: the 2024 spectrum fight

None of this week's fury came from nowhere. Musk and Ambani have been circling each other for two years over a single question: how should satellite spectrum be handed out — auctioned to the highest bidder, or allocated administratively?

Musk wanted administrative allocation and called an auction "unprecedented." Jio wrote to India's telecom regulator urging it to reconsider, and Jio and Airtel both pushed for auctions like the ones used for terrestrial telecom. In October 2024, Communications Minister Scindia settled it: administrative allocation, under the Telecom Act 2023. Musk was delighted. "Much appreciated! We will do our best to serve the people of India with Starlink," he posted on X.

Then came the twist nobody predicted: in 2025, Jio and Airtel each signed distribution deals with Starlink in India. The would-be rivals became retail partners. Which makes this week's "monopolistic exploitation" charge stranger still — Musk is accusing of monopoly the man whose company agreed to sell Starlink's own service.

What changed? The money, probably. Deloitte forecasts India's satellite broadband market at $1.9 billion by 2030. Starlink's Indian pricing briefly surfaced on its own website late last year — about Rs 8,600 a month with a Rs 34,000 hardware kit, figures multiple outlets describe as a placeholder rather than final pricing. Set that against the average Indian wireless revenue per user of about Rs 196 a month, and a junior minister's 2025 suggestion that users might pay around Rs 3,000 a month, and you see the problem. Jefferies has described Starlink as a "premium niche" in India. The rural poor Musk invokes in his letter are the people least able to afford the service — a tension his posts never address.

The money: 535 million subscribers and a market that notices

Whatever the merits, the market flinched. On Thursday, after Musk's "real boss of India" post, Reliance Industries fell about 2.6%, wiping roughly Rs 21,200 crore off the value of the Ambani family's stake, while the Nifty 50 dropped around 1.7% — though broader pressure from rate expectations, crude near $104, and foreign selling was in the mix too. Bharti Airtel traded lower as well. (Those figures come from a single Indian outlet's tally, so treat them as reported, not gospel.)

The scale of what Musk is up against: TRAI data for July put Reliance Jio at about 535.12 million mobile subscribers and Bharti Airtel at about 384.23 million — together more than 919 million, over 80% of India's telecom market. That is not a monopoly in the legal sense; it is a duopoly with a long tail. But it explains why Musk's posts land like artillery. When you have 165-country licensing and five years of compliance behind you, and you are still waiting, and the two companies ahead of you in the queue are also the two companies that lobbied against you in 2024 — frustration is understandable. Evidence is not frustration, though.

Reliance, notably, has said nothing. Akash Ambani declined to comment this week; Jio did not respond to requests for comment. Silence is sometimes strategy: why dignify a social-media broadside with a press release?

Our verdict: pressure campaign, not diplomacy

Here is our judgment, stated plainly. Musk is not conducting diplomacy; he is running a pressure campaign. The playbook is familiar from his other fights: take a regulatory delay, personalise it, aim it at the most famous name in the room, and let the outrage do the lobbying. It worked, sort of, in 2024 on spectrum allocation. Whether it works on security clearances — the domain of the Home Ministry, not the telecom minister, and not any industrialist — is much less clear.

The honest scorecard: Musk's core factual claim — that Starlink is being singled out — is contradicted by the approvals record. His implied claim — that Ambani is personally blocking him — has no public evidence behind it, and the strongest counter-evidence is that Jio's own satellite arm is stuck in the same queue. The government's position has been consistent and specific: non-discriminatory framework, security assessments underway, spectrum-charging rules near finalisation.

But do not mistake the government's specificity for speed. Five years of compliance, 20 built gateways, and still no commercial launch is a genuine failure of process — and it is the kind of failure that makes Musk's theatre effective even when his facts are wrong. Scindia saying "we are technology agnostic" is easy; clearing a second-stage security review is not. If New Delhi wants the argument to end, the fastest rebuttal is a launch date.

One more thing worth watching: this is now a US-India story, not just a Musk-India story. Washington has spent the year tightening tech screws on New Delhi — visa programme suspensions, tariff threats — while Musk, now a fixture of the Trump orbit, wages his own parallel campaign. The "Dear Prime Minister Ambani" letter is the loudest shot in that campaign so far. It will not be the last.

Related coverage: SpaceX snapped up the airwaves T-Mobile was forced to sell — Musk's other spectrum fight, this one in America; Tesla surrendered its 'Full Self-Driving' name in Europe — another Musk retreat, this one to regulators; Starship's first orbital flight deployed Starlink V3 satellites — the constellation behind the fight.

Sources: Indian Express (Oct 8-10, 2026); The Hindu BusinessLine (Oct 8-9); Hindustan Times (Oct 8-9); Times of India (Oct 9-10); The Tribune (Oct 10); Mathrubhumi English (Oct 10); Business Standard (Oct 8-9); NDTV Profit (Oct 9); ThePrint (approvals timeline); News18 (pricing); IBTimes Singapore (market data). Musk's posts quoted from X as embedded in Indian Express, Times of India and NDTV reporting. Reliance did not respond to requests for comment, per Indian Express. Market-move figures via Oneindia (single source, attributed). Pricing figures from a 2025 Starlink website showing described by outlets as a placeholder — no final 2026 commercial pricing has been announced.

Daniel Rao is a technology journalist covering AI, privacy and regulation at TechPulse USA. He writes about the collision between new technology and old norms.

Update, Oct. 11: Musk's newest jab and a "no colony" rebuke

The row kept escalating after publication. In his newest post on X, Musk went after what he called "Ambani's army of Internet shills," arguing their case against Starlink's entry was contradictory: "On the one hand, they say Starlink couldn't possibly compete with the amazing low prices offered by Ambani's de facto monopoly in India and then, in the same breath, they essentially claim that Starlink would be too strong of a competitor! This is absurd hypocrisy and hyperbole," he wrote (ET Now, Oct 11). Musk added that competition would benefit consumers — "Ambani's profits will be lower, but he is not going out of business" — and conceded the practical point: if Starlink is too expensive in India, nobody will buy it, so SpaceX will need to price affordably.

The backlash crossed into political territory. Actor-politician and Rajya Sabha MP Kamal Haasan hit back, asserting that "India is no colony" and that no billionaire should dictate a nation's policies (The Shillong Times, Oct 11). His line reframes the fight from telecom regulation to national sovereignty.

See also: SpaceX's $40B AI chip bet — Musk's satellite empire is spending big elsewhere too; Tesla's Cybercab Austin passenger launch — another Musk venture pushing into regulated territory.