Indian tower companies GTL Infrastructure and Viom Networks have submitted bids to acquire 7000 telco towers owned by Vodafone Essar, according to Livemint.com. A source close to the deal confirmed to TelecomFinance that GTL is interested in the towers…
Indian tower companies GTL Infrastructure and Viom Networks have submitted bids to acquire 7000 telco towers owned by Vodafone Essar, according to Livemint.com.
A source close to the deal confirmed to TelecomFinance that GTL is interested in the towers and that it has hired Standard Chartered Bank to advise it on a potential deal.
According to Livemint.com, Viom is being advised by Barclays Capital.
Essar is looking to sell towers in seven circles where it already co-owns other towers with Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular.
Back in 2007, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone Essar spun off some of their towers into an independent company, Indus Towers. The company now has about 100,000 towers.
Vodafone Essar has been looking to sell the 7000 towers, who were valued at about Rs20bn (US$435m) back in November, for quite some time now. But Vodafone, which is a majority shareholder in Vodafone Essar, reportedly said last year that it was not engaged in a formal sale process.
With so many tower companies in India, a new wave of consolidation is expected in the near future. Early last year, GTL bought 17,500 that belonged to Aircel for US$1.8bn, boosting its tower capacity to 32,500.
But in September, GTL’s US$11bn merger with the Reliance Infratel towers business collapsed. Experts in the industry believe there might have been valuation differences between the two companies.