New Delhi, March 14 -- India's biggest telecom operators-Reliance Jio andBharti Airtel Ltd-turning marketing agents for Elon Musk's satellite broadband project, Starlink, is a welcome development.

The government must explicitly assist in this with funds from the Universal Service Obligation Fund, now dubbed the Digital Bharat Nidhi, to make satellite broadband connection affordable even for low-income communities in rural areas.

Ever since Jio stormed India's wireless broadband market with initially free and later low-cost data plans, broadband usage in India has grown by leaps and bounds. But the fact remains that broadband access stays stunted at 47% of the population.

That means over 750 million Indians do not have access to broadba...