India's Bharti Airtel buys $820 in spectrum at auction (updated)

Bharti Hexacom

26/06/2024 12:59

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       BENGALURU, June 26 (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel  BRTI.NS ,
India's No.2 telecom operator by subscribers, has spent 68.57
billion rupees ($820.3 million) to acquire spectrum at a
government auction in the world's second-largest smartphone
market, it said on Wednesday.
    The company said it bought 97 megahertz (MHz) spectrum that
was expiring this year and acquired additional spectrum to boost
its mid-band holding in its key circles.
    Bharti Airtel said it has the country's largest mid-band
pool, which is commonly used for 5G connectivity.
    Market leader Reliance Industries'  RELI.NS  Jio Infocomm 
and No.3 Vodafone Idea (VI)  VODA.NS  are yet to report their
purchases.
    A total of 10GHz in airwaves, ranging between 800 MHz and 26
gigahertz (GHz), were up for sale in this year's auction, which
has been delayed twice.
    That spectrum is worth 962.38 billion rupees, but the
government received bids worth just over 110 billion rupees, per
local media reports, as the firms had acquired enough to meet
most of their bandwidth requirements in the previous auction.
    In that auction, 72GHz in airwaves was up for sale and
attracted bids worth $19 billion for 5G spectrum, which was on
auction for the first time ever.
 
 ($1 = 83.5964 Indian rupees)

 (Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee and Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru;
Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Savio D'Souza)
 ((Hritam.Mukherjee@thomsonreuters.com; X: @MukherjeeHritam;))