Bharti Airtel - which recently declared that its network is 5G-ready - does not anticipate any material change in its capital expenditure profile with the advent of fifth-generation services, its CEO Gopal Vittal said on Thursday.
Addressing an investor call after announcing a strong Q3 performance, Vittal also said that the company will shut down its copper infrastructure in a year or so, and only have fibre to the home.
“We are...In the process of rapidly upgrading our legacy copper assets completely to Fibre,” he said, terming it a “game-changing move”.
Outlining the company’s spectrum strategy, Vittal said Bharti Airtel is keen on a full footprint of sub-GHz spectrum across the country, even as it looks to balance a combination of capacity and renewals.
“There are many circles...Where we don’t have a sub GHz spectrum,so we would love to have that. There are some renewals coming up on 1800 band, there is also some capacity spectrum available on 2300 band where we already got deployed equipment...A combination of capacity or renewal we will look and balance it, and make sure we optimise what we do,” Vittal said.
His comments came at a time when the government has set the ball rolling for the spectrum auction, in which radio waves valued at Rs 3.92 lakh crore will be put on the block.
The auction in seven spectrum bands for mobile services - 700, 800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2300 and 2500 MHz bands - is scheduled to start from March 1.
On tariff hikes, the Airtel top honcho declined to comment on specific timing when rates would go up, saying it is a competitive issue and based on market dynamics.
“I believe, we will be ready to take up tariffs if and when any player actually moves tariffs, given that we are already at a premium,” he said.