Airtel prepays Rs 8,024 crore dues for spectrum to telecom department

Bharti Airtel on Monday announced that it has prepaid Rs 8,024 crore to the Department of Telecom towards part prepayment of deferred liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in the auction of the year 2015.

“The said instalments had an interest rate of 10 per cent and have been prepaid by Airtel, leveraging much lower cost financing available to it,” the telco said in a statement.

The move is expected to help India’s second-largest telco save on interest costs annually and improve cash flows even as it rapidly rolls out 5G networks and looks to offer the next-gen mobile broadband services nationally by December.