Telecom operator Bharti Airtel has plans to spend about Rs 1.17 lakh crore through business transactions with its subsidiaries like Indus Towers, Nxtra and Bharti Hexacom, according to a regulatory filing.
The company will hold an extraordinary general meeting of the members of the company on February 26 to also seek their approval for issuing shares to Google for its about Rs 7,500 crore investment in the company to buy 1.28 per cent stake, PTI reported from New Delhi.
According to the EGM notice, Bharti Airtel will spend Rs 88,000 crore in business with mobile tower company Indus Towers, Rs 15,000 crore for availing services of data centre firm Nxtra and transaction of up to Rs 14,000 crore with Bharti Hexacom.
Bharti Airtel will invest up to Rs 17,000 crore on transactions with Indus Towers in the next 4 financial years and Rs 20,000 crore in 2025-26, the filing said on Saturday.
“Given the 5G developments globally, it is likely that 5G will soon start to become a reality in India also, slowly in the key cities and then going into the rest of India across the length and breadth of our current network. Therefore, considering the increased requirements of passive infrastructure during massive 5G rollouts, the Company proposing the higher amount of transactions of up to Rs 20,000 crore per annum with Indus Towers for FY 2025-26,” the notice said.
On February 1, while unveiling India’s annual budget for fiscal 2022-23, the government had emphasized on the technology sector, with the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announcing a plan to auction 5G airwaves this year, and pushing for the design and wider local manufacturing of telecoms and electronics products.
Soon after Sitharaman’s announcement on 5G in parliament during her Budget speech, Telecoms Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw told the media outside the House that regulator TRAI would submit its recommendation on 5G spectrum auction and related issues by March after which the process of the service rollout would be expedited.
The airwaves auction in India, the world’s second-biggest wireless market with over a billion subscribers, will kick off a rollout of next-generation 5G telecoms services by end-March 2023, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament as she presented the country’s budget on Tuesday, according to media reports.