British satellite operator Inmarsat Holdings said on Wednesday that it was the first foreign operator to get India’s approval to sell high-speed broadband to planes and shipping vessels. 

Inmarsat would access the market via State-owned telecommunication company Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) after BSNL received a licence from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the London-based company said in a statement today. A representative for the Indian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of ordinary business hours. 

Inmarsat had struck deals with Indian airline SpiceJet and Shipping Corporation of India, Inmarsat Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Suri said in an interview. The operator is already offering reliable but low-data “L-band” services in India. The new licence lets it to offer much faster 4G-like “Ka-band” broadband on its GX network. 

Millions of Indian consumers and businesses are flooding onto the internet, and businesses are jostling to provide internet service to them. 

Inmarsat’s connectivity comes from satellites in geostationary orbit, but it will likely end up competing with new, deep-pocketed, low-earth orbit satellite rivals, like Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp and telecommunications tycoon Sunil Mittal’s OneWeb, which beam broadband from much closer to the earth. 

Before the aviation sector was hobbled by the pandemic, in-flight broadband was Inmarsat’s fastest-growing unit. The company was acquired by a private equity consortium for $3.4 billion last year.