US towerco American Tower has acquired 2,126 towers from mobile operator Colombia Movil, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Millicom, for US$182m.
The acquisition will be made by a new American Tower subsidiary in Colombia, ATC Infraco.
As part of the…
US towerco American Tower has acquired 2,126 towers from mobile operator Colombia Movil, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Millicom, for US$182m.
The acquisition will be made by a new American Tower subsidiary in Colombia, ATC Infraco.
As part of the deal, Millicom and the other shareholders in Colombia Movil have the option to acquire an indirect “substantial minority” stake in ATC Infraco.
Colombia Movil, which operates under the Tigo brand, and ATC Infraco will enter into a leasing agreement, which will see ATC Infraco providing Colombia Movil with towers.
American Tower and Millicom said that they expect the towers to start being transferred during Q4 2011.
The chairman, president and CEO of American Tower, James Taiclet, said: “As our customers in Colombia continue their focus on deploying wireless data networks, we believe our collocation model provides them with significant value through capex savings and time to market advantages.”
The president and CEO of Millicom, Mikael Grahne, said: “This agreement confirms our commitment to outsourcing passive infrastructure, and is entirely consistent with our strategy of improving both our capital and operating efficiency by focussing on our core activities of sales, marketing, branding, distribution, service innovation and customer care, and this makes even more sense in a large country such as Colombia.”
In Colombia, Tigo’s major mobile competitors are America Movil’s Comcel and Telefonica’s Movistar.
American Tower has been actively expanding its international operations and has recently announced several towers deals in Latin America and Africa.
According to the company’s Q1 2011 report, it acquired exclusive rights to 116 towers from Telefonica in Colombia for US$21m during the first quarter. It made a larger acquisition of 637 towers in Brazil for US$553m in March.
It has also acquired towers in Chile and South Africa.
In the Q1 report, American Tower’s CEO James Taiclet said: “We are also confident in significant multi-year growth opportunities in our targeted international markets including Latin America, India and portions of sub-Saharan Africa, and we are fully engaged in strengthening our position in these markets.”
A Millicom spokeswoman said that the company was outsourcing passive infrastructure as a “general principle”.
In its Q2 results, released today, it stated that it had signed a tower sharing deal in Guatemala with Telecom Guatemala.
