New Delhi
Bharti Airtel, a leading telecom provider, announced on Monday that it has prepaid ₹8,465 crore to the government to settle high-cost deferred liabilities related to spectrum purchased in 2016. The payment was made to the Department of Telecom (DoT) at an interest rate of 9.3%.
Earlier in June, the company had prepaid ₹7,904 crore to the DoT to clear deferred liabilities for spectrum acquired in 2012 and 2015. These liabilities carried higher interest rates of 9.75% and 10%. With this, Airtel has fully cleared its deferred spectrum liabilities from 2012 and 2015.
In January, Airtel had also prepaid ₹8,325 crore towards the spectrum acquired in 2015.
The telecom giant has recently launched India’s first network-based AI-powered spam detection tool. This service, available at no cost, alerts customers to suspected spam calls and messages in real time. Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO of Airtel, mentioned that the tool can identify 99.5% of spam messages and 97% of spam calls.
For the April-June quarter, Airtel reported a net profit of ₹4,160 crore, marking a 158% year-on-year increase. Its revenue grew by 2.8% YoY to ₹38,506 crore, with its India business contributing ₹29,046 crore, up 10.1%. The company’s digital TV services remained steady with a customer base of 16.3 million.
