Signals before satellites
Published 11 October 2026
India's argument about satellite internet began with a question about development, long before it became a contest between telecom companies. In the early 1960s, space applications were still experimental even in the United States. Vikram Sarabhai saw a use for them in a country whose needs extended far beyond the cities where a communications network was easiest to build. The Indian National Committee for Space Research was set up in 1962 under the Department of Atomic Energy. Its work joined scientific ambition to an immediate practical problem: how could a country use a technology operating above its territory to deliver something useful within it? That question made the receiver on the ground as important as the object in space. isro.gov.in, Genesis
The transmission of the Tokyo Olympic Games across the Pacific through the American Syncom-3 satellite offered a demonstration of what communications from orbit could do. Sarabhai recognized the possibilities. The purpose was not confined to proving that India could participate in a new field of engineering. ISRO's account of its origins describes a wider effort involving scientists, anthropologists, communicators and social scientists. That combination mattered. A signal could cross a great distance without deciding what its audience needed, whether the audience could receive it, or whether the information carried by it was useful. The early programme therefore connected the engineering of transmission to the study of its use. Satellite communication was a means, rather than a complete answer to development. isro.gov.in, Genesis
In 1967, the Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station in Ahmedabad became operational. It also trained Indian and international scientists and engineers. The choice of an earth station made the programme's practical character visible. India did not have to wait until it owned a satellite to begin learning how to use one. Foreign spacecraft could support the first applications while Indian teams developed experience on the ground. The distinction between owning a space asset and gaining useful access to its capacity was present from the start. A country could build skill through a network that crossed national boundaries, while retaining the ambition to develop equipment and operations of its own. Borrowed capacity and domestic capability were parts of the same early strategy. isro.gov.in, Genesis
Before attempting a full satellite system, the programme tested whether television could serve national development. KrishiDarshan supplied agricultural information to farmers and received a good response, according to ISRO's historical account. The order was deliberate: first identify an application and test the medium, then expand the delivery system. A broadcast could be technically successful and still fail its public purpose if its content did not help the intended audience. In that sense, the agricultural programme was a test of the communications system even without being a spacecraft test. It asked whether the information arriving at the other end of the link could be used. The programme gave satellite planning an audience, rather than treating coverage as an end in itself. isro.gov.in, Genesis
ISRO replaced the earlier committee in August 1969. The Space Commission and the Department of Space followed in June 1972, and ISRO came under the department that September. The programme had three connected elements: communication and remote-sensing satellites, space transport, and applications. None could stand in for the others. A launch capability could place equipment in orbit; a communications payload could relay information; an application could make the relay valuable. The institution that brought those elements together was therefore doing more than assembling a succession of missions. It was organizing a system in which hardware, access and purpose had to meet. That institutional history gives a different starting point from the idea that satellite connectivity arrived in India only with a foreign consumer service. isro.gov.in, Genesis
The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment ran during 1975-76 using the American ATS-6 satellite. ISRO records that it reached about 200,000 people in 2,400 villages across six states and transmitted development-oriented programmes. It also credits the experiment with training 50,000 primary-school science teachers in a year. Those figures describe the scope of an application, not a count of individual internet subscribers. The network was carrying material to selected communities through television, with education among its uses. It demonstrated that a signal from an overseas satellite could be directed toward a domestic public objective. The achievement depended on the communication arriving where it was intended and on the work organized around that arrival, rather than on spacecraft ownership alone. isro.gov.in, Genesis
During 1977-79, the Satellite Telecommunication Experiments Project moved the work from television toward telecommunications. ISRO and the Post and Telegraphs Department used the Franco-German Symphonie satellite. The project tested a domestic communications system based on geosynchronous satellites and developed experience in designing, making, installing, operating and maintaining ground facilities. Its aim included building the competence needed for the proposed INSAT system. The shift widened what a satellite link was expected to do. A broadcast could send the same material to many receivers; a telecommunications network demanded experience with the facilities through which communication was carried. The ground segment was again central. Space provided the relay, but a usable national system required trained people and functioning equipment beneath it. isro.gov.in, Genesis