Airtel’s acquisition of Tikona’s wireless business unit will create a loss of Rs 217 crore to the government if the authorities allow the proposed acquisition, Reliance Jio said in a letter to the DoT, reports Economic Times. Jio said in the letter that Airtel is “misusing” Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) guidelines since the proposed Airtel-Tikona deal is a spectrum sharing deal, and that Airtel has arranged it as an M&A deal. The report added that this allows Airtel to “circumvent spectrum trading guidelines which only permit trading between access service (data, voice) providers and not from ISP holders (broadband, fiber),” Jio added. On being contacted by MediaNama, a Jio spokesperson said that Jio cannot provide any official statement on this or give a copy of the letter to MediaNama. However, Airtel has denied these allegations. The company said in a statement that it “has always been and will continue to be fully compliant with all regulatory guidelines. We strongly deny these allegations, which is yet another mischievous attempt to throttle/block competition.” Airtel confirmed in March that it is acquiring Tikona’s 4G business unit which holds the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum (meant for 4G) in 5 telecom circles. The deal is, however, pending approval from regulatory bodies. Note that this acquisition will place Airtel in a better position to compete with Jio since it has 4G spectrum in 21 circles, while Jio has 4G spectrum in all 22 circles. This IANS report quotes Jio’s letter in which the telco…
