SpaceX revoked the customer's pre-order after receiving an order from the Indian government

Elon Musk's SpaceX-owned Starlink corp. notified employees in India on Tuesday to return the pre-orders they had received, more than a month after New Delhi told the company to stop "booking/providing satellite internet service" in the South Asian market without obtaining a license.

The company said in an email to those who pre-orderEd Starlink in India that it was "looking forward to making Starlink available in India as soon as possible," but it was unclear "the timetable for obtaining an operating license." "As always, you can receive a refund at any time," the company wrote, outlining the steps for a refund.

Starlink has received more than 5,000 orders for equipment in India and hopes to pilot it in the country. Last year, the company appointed an Indian head who reached out to several stakeholders in the country to explore ways to work together.

In late November, the Indian government told the company, which competes with OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper backed by Barty Group, in a public statement that it needs to comply with regulations, cannot accept pre-orders and orders "effective immediately."

Starlink, which has delivered more than 100,000 terminals to its customers, sees India as a big potential market. Sanjay Bhargava, Starlink's head of India, said last year the company planned to deploy more than 200,000 active terminals in more than 160,000 regions across India by the end of December 2022.

"At Starlink, we serve people with inadequate internet access. We want to work with our peer broadband providers, as well as solution providers in desired regions, to improve and save lives. "

Even though more than 500 million people are online in India, just as many are still offline. Industry estimates that hundreds of millions of Indians living in rural areas do not have access to any broadband network.

"The government's approval process is complex. So far, no applications have yet to be approved by the government and we are working hard to provide a solution," Bhargava said at the time. "Our approach will be to get pilot approval quickly, and if the pan-Indian approval will take a long time." We are optimistic that we will be approved for the pilot program or pan-India in the coming months. "

Bhargava said in October that he warned that the actual number of terminals it could eventually deploy by the end of next year would be "much lower than that, or even zero," if not approved by the government.