NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has plans to invest Rs 27,000-28,000 crore in telecom network with afocus on 5G rollout, an executive said on Wednesday. While the company is planning to increase capital expenditure by 10-15%, it has no plans to charge apremium rate for 5G services as it has not worked in several countries that tried to do so.
“Airtel capex will be in line with that spent in the last three years. It may go up and down because of the faster rollout of 5G — Rs 27,000-28,000 crore. We may see an upsurge in one year and gradually moderate around the same level,” the executive, who did not wish to be named, said.
The company earlier had an annual average capex in the range of Rs 24,000-25,000 crore. The official said that capex is being largely spent on radios (mobile antennas), fibre, broadband and enterprise technology data centres.
According to data shared by the telecom ministry, Airtel has rolled out 3,293 base stations for 5G till November 26. The executive said that the company hopes mobile services rates to go up but the range of increase will depend on market dynamics.