Six satellite internet companies, including Elon Musk’s Starlink, have registered with Pakistan’s corporate regulator — but not one of them can sell a connection yet. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has told a Senate committee that all six are still waiting for the licences they need, held up by two missing approvals: a no-objection certificate from the country’s space regulator and a security clearance from the Ministry of Interior.
Registration, the regulator stressed, is not permission to operate. Until both approvals land — and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) issues a licence — the companies can do little more than wait. The news, reported on Saturday, 7 November 2026, leaves Pakistan’s satellite internet ambitions exactly where they have been for months: registered, but grounded.
Who the six companies are
Four of the registrations came after the Pakistan Space Activities Regulatory Board (PSARB) was established: Aether One, Galaxy Space, SpaceP and a fourth firm whose name is reported as Flanavotics by one outlet and Flynoflux by another. Starlink and SpaceCell Pakistan had already registered as local companies, bringing the total to six.
Starlink’s Pakistani arm is registered with the SECP as Starlink Internet Services Pakistan (Private) Limited, a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Starlink B.V., the SpaceX-linked company behind the world’s largest satellite internet constellation.
The details emerged from an SECP report to the Senate Standing Committee, covered by TechJuice and World Tribune Pakistan on 7 November 2026. Between them, the six names show just how crowded the queue to enter Pakistan has become — even though none of the companies has yet been allowed to switch on a single commercial connection.
Registration is not a licence
The SECP was blunt in its report to the Senate Standing Committee: registering with the SECP does not authorise any company to provide satellite internet services commercially. Before that can happen, every operator must obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) from PSARB — and so far, only SpaceP has submitted one.
The second hurdle is a security clearance from the Ministry of Interior, required for the foreign directors and shareholders of these companies. That clearance is still pending for Starlink, Galaxy Space and SpaceCell Pakistan, which is why their licensing process cannot move forward. Only once both steps are complete will the PTA issue a licence. The SECP submitted its report to the committee in response to a letter from the committee’s chairman, Rana Mahmood-ul-Hassan.
The queue is not new. The PTA told the same Senate committee in September that four to five satellite companies were interested in entering Pakistan, and that under the Pakistan Space Activities Rules 2024, an operator must register with the SECP, complete PSARB registration, meet national security requirements and then apply to the PTA for a satellite licence.
In February 2026 the PTA finalised a draft licensing framework for fixed satellite services and sent it to the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication. The framework under discussion envisages 15-year, non-exclusive licences, with conditions on data sovereignty and local gateway infrastructure. The IT minister has since said the regulations for low-Earth-orbit satellites are in their final stages — but until the framework is approved and the clearances land, the door stays shut.
What this means for internet users in Pakistan
For now, nothing changes for users: no launch date has been announced by any of the six companies, and none can switch on commercial services until the approvals are in place.
The prize, though, is real. Satellite internet is aimed at the places Pakistan’s fibre and mobile networks struggle to reach — remote villages, mountain valleys, desert districts and areas where floods have knocked out ground infrastructure. Pakistan’s broadband base has already crossed 166 million subscribers, but coverage gaps remain, and that is the market Starlink and its rivals are lining up for.
If and when licences are issued, the first customers are likely to be in areas with no fibre at all — the same communities that lose connectivity first whenever floods or outages hit the ground network.
What to watch next is straightforward: the Interior Ministry’s security clearances, the outstanding PSARB no-objection certificates, and the PTA’s licensing decision. Until those three boxes are ticked, six satellite internet companies are registered in Pakistan — and waiting.
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