Bharti Airtel Anticipates Higher Capex Levels

Indian communications service provider, Bharti Airtel, spent roughly $3.23 billion in capital expenditure in FY2026, ending March 31. In the same period, Airtel’s tower subsidiary, Indus Towers, spent another $729 million, Economic Times reported. 

Airtel is India’s second largest mobile network operator with nearly 448 million subscribers, at the end of the first quarter, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Reliance Jio is the country’s leading MNO with over 496 million wireless subs. Indus Towers reported a portfolio of 264,514 towers that supported 428,014 colocations, both metrics up by six percent year-over-year, as of the end of March. Indus Towers is the largest independent tower company in the world, by tower count, according to Inside Towers Intelligence.

“We know that in the current year, the investment will keep on going up. We need to invest more. This is not the moment to shy away,” comments Sunil Mittal, Bharti Enterprise, Founder & Chairman. 

Mittal noted that India has been moving at a “fantastic speed” with the economy growing at a 6-7 percent a year pace, even as the world faces geopolitical and economic headwinds from the Middle East crisis. Without quantifying future capex levels, he said that this is the time to invest and double down in India, pointing to underlying growth.

Mittal highlights that Airtel’s positive outlook and much of the opportunity for India comes from the fact that India is a continent of consumers, comprising a large, young population that want more products and more services.