Airtel pays off ₹3,626 crore spectrum dues to Telecom Dept. for purchases in 2016 | Company Business News

Telecom major Bharti Airtel Ltd. announced on Thursday, December 19, that the company has paid off ₹3,626 crore in dues, which it owed to the Department of Telecom for the spectrums it acquired in 2016, according to an official statement.

In the exchange filing, Bharti Airtel said that “it has prepaid ₹3,626 crores to the Department of Telecom (Government of India) clearing all its liabilities for spectrum it had acquired in 2016.” 

Bharti Airtel Ltd shares closed 0.15 per cent lower at ₹1,599 after Thursday’s market close, compared to ₹1,601.45 at the previous market close. The news of the clearance of the spectrum dues was filed with the exchange after market operational hours on December 19.

Airtel disclosed that it has paid all the spectrum dues which was incurring an interest rate of more than 8.65 per cent to the company.

“With this, Airtel has now prepaid all its spectrum dues that had interest costs higher than 8.65%,” said Airtel in its official statement. 

The telecom major also disclosed that the company, in total, has paid a total of ₹28 thousand crore in dues in the calendar year 2024.

“Airtel has prepaid a total of ₹28,320 crores of spectrum liabilities in this calendar year,” said the company in the exchange filing. 

Airtel’s expansion plan 

Mint reported earlier that Bharti Airtel announced that the company gave a multi-billion-dollar contract to the Finnish telecom company Nokia. With this step, the company aims to strengthen its capacity and coverage through the deployment of 4G and 5G equipment across key Indian cities and states.

According to the deal with Nokia, Airtel wants to leverage the company’s 5G AirScale portfolio, which includes base stations, baseband units and the latest generation of Massive MIMO radios powered by an energy-efficient ReefShark System-on-Chip technology. 

Nokia has been partnering with Airtel for more than twenty years, providing the Indian telco with 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G network equipment.