Bharti Airtel Clears Entire Spectrum Dues For 2016

Bharti Airtel Ltd. has paid off Rs 3,626 crore to the Department of Telecom to clear its entire liability for spectrum acquired in 2016, according to an exchange filing on Thursday.

The telecom major has now paid all its spectrum dues that had interest costs higher than 8.65%. Airtel has prepaid a total of Rs 28,320 crore of spectrum liabilities in 2024, it said.

The current financial year has been an eventful one for Airtel. It reported a 128% quarter-on-quarter advance in net profit in the first quarter, beating analysts' estimates, while its consolidated net profit fell marginally by 12% in the second quarter.

During the time, it rolled out an additional 11,300 towers and 30,700 mobile broadband stations. It also launched India's first network-based, AI-powered spam detection solution to curb the country's spam menace.

This spam detection software is a first-of-its-kind solution by a telecom service provider in the country. The tool sends real-time alerts to customers regarding all suspected spam calls and SMS.

The solution is free of cost and gets auto-activated for all Airtel customers without them having to raise a service request or download an app. Within two and a half months of its launch, the software flagged a staggering 800 crore spam calls and 80 crore spam messages.

The telco entered into a strategic partnership with Apple to bring exclusive offers of Apple TV+ and Apple Music to Airtel customers in India.

A change in Airtel's upper management was also announced during its Q2 results, whereby it was stated that Shashwat Sharma, who is presently the chief operations officer at Airtel, will be appointed the managing director and chief executive officer of the company on Jan. 1, 2026. The company appointed Sharma as the CEO-designate to prepare him for this new role.