Spend-IT: Airtel lifts tech spending to $100 mn as digital infrastructure scales up

Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecom and digital service providers, continued to scale its technology backbone in FY25 alongside steady business growth.

Airtel’s spending on technology touched ₹871 crore in FY25, a 24% increase over the previous year and the sharpest rise since FY17 when it had rocketed 36% to over Rs 1,000 crore. The company’s IT expenditure has moved unevenly over the past eight years, declining for four straight years FY18-FY21 before recovering gradually. The latest outlay marks its highest annual technology spend since FY17.

The growth in IT investments was aligned with Airtel’s continued expansion of digital infrastructure. In FY25, the operator added around 20,000 new sites, rolled out more than 44,000 kilometres of fiber, and grew its 5G footprint to over 129,000 sites across nearly 7,000 towns.

Airtel also piloted standalone 5G while continuing with non-standalone operations, making it the first telecom player in India to run both. Its fixed wireless access service, Xstream AirFiber, shifted to standalone 5G and crossed one million connections.

Technology adoption also advanced across operations. The company applied AI and automation for traffic management, energy optimisation, and predictive maintenance in Nxtra data centres.

Partnerships played a role in broadening Airtel’s technology portfolio. During FY25, the company expanded collaborations with Google Cloud, Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm, and signed an agreement with SpaceX to introduce satellite broadband services. It also partnered with Zscaler and Fortinet to deliver solutions that protect enterprises against a wide range of cyber threats.

The company has over 60 AI and Gen-AI use cases under works and the firm’s digital transformation is powered by a platform-first mindset. “From smarter customer interactions to SPAM protection, our digital solutions are shaping intelligent, contextual experiences. Our AI-powered, India's first, SPAM tool has identified over 26 billion calls, showcasing our innovation at scale,” according to Airtel.

Airtel’s Converged Data Engine (CDE), a full-stack, SaaS-based platform, powers all telco functions and is also being scaled to its operations in Africa. CDE also integrates with Airtel IQ, enabling advanced CPaaS use cases such as cloud telephony, click-to-call and conversational messaging across customer touchpoints.

Meanwhile, its AI-based workforce management platform is used to manage its employee and partner field force, to automate and drive productivity. The company is also optimisation operations through AI and ML algorithms to put to sleep underutilised radios, allowing other cells to manage traffic efficiently.