Bharti Infratel, the tower arm of Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel, is planning to buy towers from its parent in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Its chairman Akhil Gupta also told the Economic Times that Infratel could consider acquiring sites from local…
Bharti Infratel, the tower arm of Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel, is planning to buy towers from its parent in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Its chairman Akhil Gupta also told the Economic Times that Infratel could consider acquiring sites from local operators Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, if they came up for sale.
Infratel, which was listed for US$760m in late 2012, is looking to extend its footprint across Asia as more operators are preparing to offload towers to focus on their core operations.
At present, the towerco has over 35,000 towers and buying Airtel’s infrastructure in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh would take that number beyond 42,000.
Infratel is also part of the Indus Towers joint venture together with Vodafone and Idea, which has almost 113,000 sites, making it the world’s largest towerco.
Outside of Indus, Vodafone India has 25,000 towers while Idea Cellular has almost 10,000, according to the report.
Infratel recently signed a tower sharing agreement with Reliance Jio, the latest entrant in the mobile market.
Separately, Bharti Airtel is in the process of selling its African tower portfolio, estimated at up to US$2bn, to several towercos. A deal will help it reduce its debt load, which stood at US$10.1bn as of 31 March.
