Bharti Airtel Takes On Spectrum, Customers and Liabilities of Tata Teleservices After Merger

Bharti Airtel to Gain 71 MHz of Spectrum from Merger

Along with the customers and spectrum, Bharti Airtel will also be bearing the liabilities of Tata Teleservices, including dues such as spectrum payments. Earlier this year, TTSL had offered to surrender airwaves that it had previously bought in the auctions from the government. It might seem that the actual deal which Bharti Airtel has made with TTSL might not be as fruitful as it seemed back in 2017, but one of the big gains for the Sunil Bharti Mittal led telecom operator is in the form of airwaves. Bharti Airtel will stand to gain over 71 MHz of spectrum in three bands—1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 850 MHz. These three bands are all used for 4G and given that Airtel is hastily expanding its 4G network and undergoing a 4G network upgradation exercise to compete with Reliance Jio, this addition will be very beneficial.

TDSAT Stays DoT’s Demands of Bank Guarantees

Another thing to note about the TTSL, Bharti Airtel merger is that it awaits clearance from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) which will likely challenge the TDSAT order in the Supreme Court. In May when DoT had made a demand of Rs 8,300 crore worth of bank guarantees on the grounds of one-time spectrum charges (OTSC), the TDSAT had stayed the order citing similar stays in other merger cases in the industry by courts, including the Bombay High Court. However, the tribunal had then asked Airtel to pay up half of the Rs 1,287.97 crore demand raised by DoT as OTSC for the Chennai circle licence extension from November 30, 2014, to September 27, 2021, within four weeks. TDSAT had also given the green flag to the companies to operationalise the spectrum and undertake sequential activities.