Airtel to invest Rs 25,000 Cr for 4G network in FY18

Mumbai, November 3: In a bid to scale up its 4G network, Bharti Airtel has announced that it'll invest nearly Rs 25,000 crore in fiscal year-2018. The 25% increase in Airtel's initial investment plans of Rs 20,000 crore is on the back of stiff competition from Jio.

“There is almost no spent that we are doing on 3G. Our view is in next 3-4 years we are likely to see 3G network actually shut down faster than 2G network because there are still 50% of phone being shipped out in India that are feature phones,” Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive officer (India and South Asia) for Bharti Airtel, said during earnings call.

Vittal said that Airtel is investing in 4G technology to build more data capacity in the network. The company will use 2100 MHz band, which is used for 3G services, for 4G services.

“Where we have the second career of 3G or third career then through flip of software you get incremental capacity on 3G. Most of that spectrum will finally go towards 4G for which we will need to have radio units,” Vittal said.

Airtel’s consolidated revenue for the September quarter stood at Rs21,777 crore, a 10.4% drop on an underlying basis when adjusted for revenue from Africa and Bangladesh operations.

In a separate development, Airtel announced the transfer of its optical fibre business to its wholly-owned subsidiary Telesonic Networks for a valuation of up to Rs5,650 crore.