Bharti Airtel and Telenor Ready for Unification After DoT Approves Merger

DoT today issued a notification which finally gave a green flag to the Telenor–Bharti Airtel merger. After this move, the biggest telco in the country, Bharti Airtel will acquire all licenses owned by Telenor. After the approval of this notification from the Telecom Department Airtel is ready to take over all the licenses of Telenor as well as its liabilities. The notification which the DoT issued on Monday read “The present merger is taken on record without prejudice to the rights, contentions, remedies and steps which may be taken by the department, in pursuance of any subsequent orders of any orders, judgements and decisions of Hon’ble courts and tribunals in related pending matters.”

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Previously, The DoT had pleaded in court that Bharti Airtel should furnish a bank guarantee of Rs 1,499 crore which would become the basis of the deal for the buyout of Telenor. However, last week the matter was pulled up to the bench in Supreme Court where the bench decided to go against it and established that no such bank guarantee would be required on Airtel’s part for the deal to go through.

DoT had pleaded in court against the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) in the apex court. The apex court, however, decided to go the other way and cleared the path for Norway based Telenor buyout to go through unhindered without a Bank guarantee.

This buyout of Telenor is supposedly done to help the current largest telco of the country to bridge the gap between the subscriber share and revenue share which it would have after the merger of Idea Cellular and Vodafone India. Apart from acquiring Telenor in a no-cash deal, the company will also become responsible for its standing leftover spectrum payments totalling to Rs 1,650 crore.