1) Introduction: India has increasingly recognised outer space as a critical domain of national security, alongside land, sea, air, and cyber. Satellite infrastructure today underpins broadcasting, telecommunications, navigation, banking, disaster management, and defence networks. As adversarial capabilities grew—particularly China’s anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, electronic warfare, co-orbital surveillance and cyber intrusion tools—India reassessed the risks of relying on foreign satellites with Chinese ownership links. This led to new directives by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) and IN-SPACe restricting the use of such satellites for broadcasting and teleport operations.
For decades, Indian broadcasters used a mix of domestic INSAT-GSAT satellites and leased foreign transponders, especially C-band capacity from AsiaSat-5, AsiaSat-7 and Apstar. Growing concerns documented in the 2025 Global Counterspace Capabilities Report—including China’s ability to intercept data streams, jam signals, monitor traffic pathways, or manipulate uplinks—highlighted vulnerabilities. Dependency on Chinese-linked platforms was increasingly seen as a national-security liability.
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