No spectrum gaps anymore!

THigh he Gopal Vittal-led telco has worked assiduously over the past years to bridge the chasm that existed between it and Reliance Jio, in terms of the 4G spectrum assets. Six years ago, Airtel only had LTE spectrum for four circles as compared to RJio’s pan-India presence with all the 22 BWA licenses. Later, with the acquisitions of Qualcomm’s four circles, Airtel increased its BWA footprint to eight circles but was still short of RJio by 14 circles.

The telco gave itself first 4G shot in the arm by winning 1800 MHz airwaves for as many as 15 telecom circles in the 2014 auctions. However, there were a number of overlaps with the existing BWA circles, which meant that Airtel still had the effective ability to launch 4G in a total of 16 circles.

However, the last two months have been enormously fruitful for Airtel, with two game-changing deals coming through. First, in March, Airtel struck an agreement to buy out all spectrum assets of Videocon Telecom, which had 1800 MHz blocks across six circles of Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, UP (East), UP (West) and Gujarat. This, including the BWA overlaps, pushed Airtel’s 4G potential to 19 circles.

Then, in April, came the feather in the cap with the Aircel deal, under which the latter agreed to sell its BWA spectrum rights to Airtel for the entire span of license period that runs into 2030. These are a total of eight BWA circles and boost Airtel’s 2300 MHz presence to 17 circles (including one circle from the Augere Wireless acquisition last year).

Interestingly, once the Aircel deal is finalized, Tikona will be left as the only BWA spectrum holder in the market, apart from RJio and Airtel. Also, Tikona holds the only five BWA circles that would now be missing from Airtel’s 2300 MHz portfolio. As such, it would be interesting to see if Airtel would make an all-out bid to secure those five Tikona circles as part of yet another deal or not. Logically, it makes good M&A sense for both the sides and if such a deal comes through, it would put Airtel at par with RJio in terms of 2300 MHz assets.

Already, Airtel can easily be termed as the telco that has best executed its 4G LTE strategy without cannibalizing its existing 3G services as such. In the event of the recent deals getting finalized, it is also positioned as a clear 4G market leader for the rest of 2016.

On the technology front too, Airtel has become more proactive now. It is understood to have awarded a voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) deployment deal to Nokia, in a move that could help Airtel offset RJio’s differentiation, much of which likely comes from its VoLTE-readiness.

Airtel’s 4G spectrum assets