Bharti Airtel Pays $1 Billion to Partly Clear 2016 Spectrum Dues

Bharti Airtel has made an early cost of 84.65 billion rupees ($1.01 billion) to the Indian authorities, partially settling its excellent spectrum charges from a 2016 public sale, the telecom provider introduced on Monday.

That is the primary cost the nation’s second-largest telecom operator is making for the telephone spectrum it acquired for $2.13 billion (roughly Rs. 17,852 crore) in 2016. Cellphone spectrums are rights over airwaves purchased for a selected time.

Indian telecom operators have amassed vital dues to the federal government over spectrum charges, following years of high-stakes auctions and aggressive bidding for airwave rights.

Airtel, which didn’t disclose how a lot of the 2016 dues are pending after the cost, didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark.

It has totally pay as you go its 2012 and 2015 spectrum charges throughout the first quarter of the present monetary 12 months.

Airtel’s newest cost comes weeks after India’s prime court docket rejected a request by telecom corporations to recalculate the dues they owed the federal government.

As per an ICRA estimate, Airtel and its struggling rival Vodafone Thought owe roughly $12 billion (roughly Rs. 1,00,577 crore) in previous dues, together with spectrum fees and licensing charges to the federal government.

Monday’s cost to the federal government’s telecom division had an rate of interest of 9.3 %, Airtel mentioned.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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