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

Bharti Airtel has made an early payment of 84.65 billion rupees ($1.01 billion) to the Indian government, partially settling its outstanding spectrum fees from a 2016 auction, the telecom carrier announced on Monday.

This is the first payment the country’s second-largest telecom operator is making for the phone spectrum it acquired for $2.13 billion (roughly Rs. 17,852 crore) in 2016. Phone spectrums are rights over airwaves bought for a particular time.

Indian telecom operators have accumulated significant dues to the government over spectrum fees, following years of high-stakes auctions and competitive bidding for airwave rights.

Airtel, which did not disclose how much of the 2016 dues are pending after the payment, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

It has fully prepaid its 2012 and 2015 spectrum fees during the first quarter of the current financial year.

Airtel’s latest payment comes weeks after India’s top court rejected a request by telecom firms to recalculate the dues they owed the government.

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

Monday’s payment to the government’s telecom department had an interest rate of 9.3 percent, Airtel said.

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