Bharti Airtel, the second-largest telecom company in India, announced in a press release that it has prepaid ₹3,626 crores to the Department of Telecom, Government of India, thereby settling all its liabilities for the spectrum acquired in 2016. With this payment, Airtel has fully repaid all its spectrum dues that incurred interest rates exceeding 8.65%. 

Previous installments 

In 2024, Airtel prepaid a total of ₹28,320 crore in spectrum liabilities. In June, the company settled all outstanding dues from the 2012 and 2015 auctions by prepaying ₹7,904 crore to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). On September 30, Airtel paid ₹8,465 crore towards dues from the 2016 auction. On Thursday, Bharti Airtel's shares closed 1.46% lower on the BSE at ₹1,709.90.

Spectrum story so far

In 2016, the government auctioned 2,354.55 MHz of spectrum across seven bands, drawing interest from major telecom players such as Bharti Airtel, Jio, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, and Aircel. However, only 40% of the available spectrum was sold, primarily due to the high base prices set for the auction.

The telecom reforms package introduced in 2021 enabled telecom companies to convert the interest on deferred payment moratoriums into equity.

The Telcos status 

Airtel has collaborated with the Indian Army to improve network services and enhance connectivity in remote areas of military bases. Recently, the company has successfully established connectivity in Bandipore, Kupwara, and Baramulla.

Read about it here! 

So far as the telecom space is concerned, Airtel is doing great there too.  According to the report published by Airtel, it has alerted around 252 Million unique customers of suspicious calls and has reported around a 12 percent decline in the number of customers responding to them.  

Read about it here!