Another telecom tariff hike coming in the next 12 to 18 months: Nitin Soni

“There is incentive for the telecom companies to bid for the higher bandwidth to lower the spectrum usage charges. Going forward, the spectrum usage charges will be calculated based on the weighted average of the quantity of spectrum and the bandwidth of spectrum these telcos have,” says Nitin Soni, Senior Director, Fitch Ratings

What do you make of Airtel’s EMD deposit? Is that going to be enough for them to buy 5G spectrum to provide pan-India services?

Yes, we rate Bharti at BBB minus with the stable outlook. We expect Bharti to spend about $6 to $7 billion on the pan-India 5G network. Given the earnest money deposit which Bharti has made, we still believe that they will go for a pan-India 5G spectrum but there could be a case that they might not bid for spectrum assets in the weaker states where 4G monetisation is very low.