Bharti Group-backed OneWeb has said it is on course to roll out its fast satellite broadband services in the country, regardless of hiccups caused by the continuing Russia-Ukraine war, as it is readying to launch a chunk of its remaining low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites from the space centre in Sriharikota and expects to have all pending regulatory approvals shortly.

A OneWeb spokesperson told the company's "launch schedule was impacted by the Ukraine crisis", but the company plans to "use Indian (satellite) launchers in 2022 itself to serve the country's market at the earliest".

OneWeb's original May 2022 satellite broadband service launch plans in India had got delayed after it had to suspend its LEO satellite launches from a key cosmodrome in Kazakhstan amid Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

But the company, co-owned by India's Bharti Group and the UK government, has inked a pact with NewSpace India, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), to launch some of its remaining LEO satellites from India. The upcoming launches from Sriharikota will add to its current in-orbit constellation of 428 satellites - out of the targeted 648-strong global constellation - to deliver high-speed, low-latency satellite broadband services in rural and remote regions globally, including in India.

"OneWeb has already been granted the NLD (national long distance) and GMPCS (global mobile personal communications by satellite services) licences for delivering satellite broadband services in India, and it expects to receive the other necessary approvals (read: landing rights or market access) shortly," the company wrote in response to queries.

Satellite landing rights and market access approvals are vital for OneWeb to establish in-country earth stations (satellite gateways) and also deploy its global satellite bandwidth capacity in India.