The country’s second largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel (Airtel), on Friday said that it has prepaid ₹7,904 crore to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), to clear high cost deferred liabilities for spectrum acquired in 2012 and 2015.
“With this, the company has fully prepaid all deferred liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in auction of the year 2012 and 2015 which were at the highest interest cost of 9.75 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively,” Airtel said in a statement.
In January too, the company had paid ₹8,325 crore to the DoT towards part prepayment of the deferred liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in auction of year 2015 which were at an interest cost of 10 per cent.
Before that, in July 2023, the company had also paid ₹8,024 crore to the DoT towards part prepayment of deferred liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in auction of 2015 with an interest rate of 10 per cent, leveraging much lower cost financing available to it.
Such instalments allowed the company to have enhanced financial flexibility in its capital structure including optimised cost of financing using all opportunities for significant interest savings, like these prepayments.
The company had acquired spectrum worth ₹29,129.08 crore in the auctions that were held in March 2015 and had paid ₹11,374.7 crore, while the upfront amount due was ₹7,832.20 crore.