Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, will be spending about Rs 1.17 lakh crore in the next five years on its subsidiaries, namely Nxtra, Indus Towers, and Bharti Hexacom. This money is largely to prepare the digital infrastructure of India, which will help the telco in rolling out 5G services efficiently.
Airtel plans to spend about Rs 88,000 crore out of the Rs 1.17 lakh crore on Indus Towers alone. Indus Towers, a mobile tower company, will be able to proliferate the number of towers across the country, which will help the telcos with providing a better 5G coverage and ready the digital infra of the country.
According to a PTI report, the telco will be spending about Rs 17,000 crore per financial year until the next four years and Rs 20,000 crore in FY2025-26 on transactions with Indus Towers. This will take the total tally of investments of Airtel in Indus Towers to Rs 88,000 crore.
Bharti Airtel to Also Spend Money on Nxtra
Nxtra by Airtel is the telco’s data centre business and is also the company with the largest network of data centres in India. Bharti Airtel will be spending about Rs 15,000 crore for availing services of Nxtra along with Rs 14,000 crore with Bharti Hexacom.
Nxtra by Airtel is investing aggressively in increasing the capacity of its data centres as the demand for cloud services is going up. Further, Nxtra is also making investments in green energy power plants and aims to fulfil more than 50% of its energy requirements through solar power or green energy.
Airtel’s board is also scheduled to meet on February 26 for seeking approval to sell 1.28% of the stake in the company to Google for a $700 million investment. For the unaware, Airtel will be getting an investment of up to $1 billion from Google, out of which $700 will be for equity and $300 million for forming multi-year deals.
