Indian tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal said his Eutelsat OneWeb venture is “significantly ahead” of Starlink in India’s satellite-communication approval queue, amid Elon Musk’s criticism that some oligarchs are blocking his attempts to gain spectrum access in the country.

“We applied five years ago,” Mittal said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Wednesday (Oct.14), “We still do not have the necessary permission, so we would be very happy to receive it, even a few days before him.”

Mittal, according to a Bloomberg report yesterday, was responding to a question on Musk’s recent comments in an X post that “oligarchs” — widely interpreted as a swipe at Mittal and Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Mukesh Ambani — are preventing equal spectrum access and maintain a “monopolistic chokehold” over India’s digital infrastructure.

Musk even referred to Ambani as the “real boss of India.”

OneWeb’s ground networks have been ready for the past three years, and our satellites have been hovering over India for the past five years, Mittal said.

He has invested in Starlink’s closest rival, OneWeb, which is part of Paris-based Eutelsat Group.

Ambani’s Reliance Jio formed a joint venture with Luxembourg-based SES SA in 2022 with the goal of delivering very affordable high-speed internet via medium-earth orbit satellites.

The billionaire also warned against over-reliance on any single country for supply chains, saying the world has now learned the importance of interdependence without becoming over-dependent.

His remarks come in the context of supply shocks and China’s dominance across critical value chains.

Mittal said he plans to expand to other markets globally with his telecom business. He also called for immediate regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence, warning that governments shouldn’t wait for a serious rogue agent incident before acting.

The billionaire also raised concerns that governments aren’t coordinating in the race to build new AI systems.

“The AI ecosystem cannot live in isolation, whether it’s a Chinese system or a US system,” he said, “It’s got to be a global system, and that conversation, unfortunately, is not happening at face.”