Bharti Airtel, on Monday informed the stock exchanges that it has successfully concluded the transaction for the acquisition of rights to use 20 MHz of 2300 Band spectrum from Aircel in 6 out of 8 circles, following the receipt of all necessary approvals and satisfying all the conditions, including conditions stated in the Spectrum Trading Guidelines. These six circles are Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Assam and North East.
“We shall update the stock exchanges when the transactions for the remaining circles of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa are completed. We request you to take the above information on record,” the company said in regulatory filings to stock exchanges.
Airtel has entered into an agreement with Aircel to acquire rights to use 4G spectrum of the latter in eight telecom circles-Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, Assam, the North-East, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha -for Rs 3,500 crore.
Last week, PTI reported said that the Telecom Ministry had cleared the Rs 3,500-crore 4G spectrum trading deal between India’s leading telecom carrier Bharti Airtel and Aircel. The report said that the deal was cleared on July 4 by Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The report said that the Sunil Mittal-led company was asked to surrender 1.2 Mhz spectrum in Odisha circle for approval as it breached the spectrum cap limit after taking into account the Aircel holdings. Airtel has subsequently surrendered 1.2 Mhz spectrum in 1800 Mhz before the deal was cleared, according to the source, cited by the news report. As per the spectrum trading rule, no player can hold more than 25 per cent of the total spectrum allocated in a particular service area.
