Updated : Bharti, Idea, Vodafone To Share Infrastructure

[@ksh@T 20]

Bharti, Idea, Vodafone to share infrastructure

NEW DELHI: Top three GSM mobile operators have joined hands to set up an independent tower company, Indus Towers, that aims to share passive infrastructure with all telecom players to enable lower cost and a more competitive operative environment.

The passive infrastructure will be shared in 16 circles, with Bharti and Vodafone owning 42 per cent stake each in the tower company. Idea will hold the balance 16 per cent.

Indus Towers will have 70,000 sites and will be an independently managed and operated company.

In addition to telecom companies, it would share infrastructure with the other wireless service providers like broadcasters and broadband service providers.

guys yeh to gadbad ghotala ho gaya! . .sab ek ho gaye!

[Honest 836]

^^^

All the looters came under one roof my dear friends.

Regards.

[kshah 452]

woh to hona hi tha

[hritik123 4]

This is called cartelisation , Hope now reliance and tata will join hands too,

Airtel coverage was anyways good now it will definitely be better

[@ksh@T 20]

no never ...

this will never happen! . . .in any case anil has far better vision of market capitalization . . .and he knows hw to take paisa frm aam janta! . . he need nt copy ne1

[@ksh@T 20]

NEW DELHI: India’s leading GSM players Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular on Saturday announced the merger of their wireless infrastructure businesses in 16 circles to share 70,000 tower units and also form the world’s largest ‘independent’ tower company.

Called Indus Towers Ltd, Bharti and Vodafone will each have a 42% equity in this infrastructure firm, while Idea Cellular will hold the remaining 16%, the telcos companies said in a joint statement.

“The idea is that Indus will be a truly independent tower company, where no player enjoys a majority stake. We are looking at listing Indus Towers at the earliest, but it is for the new board of this company to set the time frame for this,” Bharti Airtel’s joint MD, Akhil Gupta told ET.

Bharti and Vodafone will contribute 29,400 towers each to Indus with Idea bringing in 11,200 towers. Bharti Infratel, the hived off tower arm of Bharti Airtel will retain the company’s passive infrastructure in the remaining 7 telecom circles. “Infratel will be left with about 20,000 after the creation of Indus,” Mr Gupta said.

The move will enable all three service providers to and increase efficiencies and reduce expansion costs. “The three companies will each merge their existing passive infrastructure assets in 16 telecom circles in India. Indus Towers will provide passive infrastructure services to all operators on a nondiscriminatory basis. Indus Towers will enable optimisation of future tower roll-out and enhanced operational efficiency leading to opex and capex savings for its customers,” the joint statement by the three service providers added.

The Indian consumer will benefit through improved network reach and quality, more choice and significantly greater access to mobile services across the country, the three telcos said.

Currently, Indus will be restricted to only 16 circles as Vodafone Essar operates only in these many circles, while Idea provides telecom services in 11 circles. When asked, if Indus would be extended to the remaining 7 circles, when Vodafone and Idea get licenses and spectrum for a pan-India footprint, Mr Gupta said that ‘no decision had been taken on this issue’.

The merger of their tower businesses will imply that all new passive infrastructure rollouts in the 16 circles will be undertaken by Indus Towers. The three leading GSM operators also said that Indus Towers would provide them with significant scale benefits, in addition to helping them undertake ‘a significant rollout of telecom infrastructure to propel the mobile sector towards achieving India’s teledensity and rural coverage goals within the next few years’.

Even amidst fierce competition, all service providers in India, the world’s fastest growing mobile market, are working towards large scale sharing of passive infrastructure to cut down on expansion costs and keep tariffs low even as they extend their footprint to rural India. Lower capex and opex are key to offsetting the low usage from new subscriber additions beyond the large towns and cities.

India added over 8 million new wireless users in October, taking the country’s mobile subscriber base to over 217 million. (November figures are yet to be released by both the cellular industry and sector regulator TRAI).

arre yeh to ghar banne se pehle hi kaam kharab ho gaya!

[u][b]Rift in COAI widens; 3-way tower biz fuels fire[/b][/u]

NEW DELHI: Differences between members of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) have emerged out in the open with smaller GSM players voicing against the increasing influence of top two-three players in the body, indicating a clear rift. 

Industry sources said regional GSM players were miffed at the pre-dominant influence exerted over COAI of the top players, which according to them was reflected in the recent business moves in the backend as well. 

The formation of the three-way tower business entity (Bharti, Vodafone-Essar and Idea Cellular) is the first sign of monopolistic consolidation, which may in some way lead to cartelization, a GSM player said on condition of anonymity. 

This may well lead the way to monopolistic structures being created later, they said, adding it was neither good news from a healthy fair play competition perspective and certainly not from customers' interest. 

"Views of these dominant larger players are unfortunately being made synonymous with that of COAI -- almost as if the views of the top two GSM players are that of COAI which is not the case at all," the sources said. 

They said it was important, almost mandatory that all the major players, including Reliance GSM, MTNL and BSNL play as much of an active role in the COAI and the body should encourage such players to participate more actively. 

The rift comes close on heels of the GSM body COAI walking out of official panel to review spectrum allocation norms, accusing the committee of working with pre-determined mindset.

[kshah 452]

All major GSM operators seems to be shivering due to reliance's entry in GSM. If they are really offering great services what they are afraid of? I know they offer poorer services than reliance and even TATA. But they have been able to market themselves as consumer friendly service providers.

[Honest 836]

^^^

MY dear friends, all major GSM operators have so far done the job of looting the customers and digging holes in their subscribers pockets. Nothing else. No improvement in technology. Reliance will definetely going to teach them the lesson.

Regards.

[@ksh@T 20]

Standalone tower cos to take on Bharti-Vodafone-Idea combine

New Delhi: A Third Front may be in the offing in the multi-billion dollar telecom tower business in India. Stand-alone tower companies such as Essar Telecom Tower & Infrastructure, GTL, Quipo, Xcel telecom, TowerVision are planning to consolidate their businesses to compete with the big three—the Bharti-Vodafone-Idea combine company Indus, Reliance Communication’s RTIL and Tata’s yet-to-be named tower company.

“Stand-alone tower companies have held several joint meetings. Nothing has been finalised,” the CEO of a the tower company, who’s part of this move, told ET. On the other hand, the spokesperson of one of the largest independent tower companies said: “We’ve had meetings. This is not to form a single front, but to grow the business together. The sector is showing massive growth—these meetings have only helped us make plans to tap the business potential better.”

A leading executive with another tower company clarified that the objective is not to merge businesses of different companies but look at opportunities jointly. “There’s no merger or financial stake transfer in the pipeline. The talks, which are in the initial stage, revolve around coordination and cooperation amongst stand-alone tower companies. In the process, there could be some mergers or buy-outs.

Consolidation is inevitable but that is not the purpose of the ongoing talks.” Giving out more details, an executive with an infrastructure company, which also has a telecom tower arm, said, “So far, the talks have been about common external factors. We are not trying to form a cartel. We are only exploring ways to help each other with land acquisition for setting up towers. Most of the towers that independent companies are building are in rural India, where power supply is a huge issue. If we jointly implement solutions to tackle this issue, it would reduce our capex considerably”.

Industry analysts say that stand-alone tower companies will be forced to work together and also consolidate in order to compete with the hived-off independent infrastructure arms of large telecom companies. These have considerable advantages due to their size and spread. For instance, Indus Towers, the recently-announced joint venture between Bharti, Vodafone and Idea has over 72,000 sites, Bharti Infratel has over 21,000 sites while Reliance’s RTIL is slated to end this fiscal with 40,000 towers. In comparison, none of the stand-alone tower firms have even 5,000 towers.

The last couple of months have witnessed consolidation amongs the independent tower firms. Earlier this year, mobile service provider Spice Communications sold its tower arm to Srei Infrastructure (which owns stand-alone tower company Quipo) for Rs 500 crore. Last month, Morgan Stanley picked up a stake in telecom infrastructure company — TowerVision. In November 2007, Xcel Telecom, which has already obtained a commitment of about $500 million from US-based investment fund Q to undertake buy-outs, acquired Tics Telecom, a Punjab-based telecom tower company.

[@ksh@T 20]

Vodafone honcho to lead Indus Towers

MUMBAI: GSM giants Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular have put together a team to lead their joint venture Indus Towers, which is the world’s largest telecom tower company.

Indus has appointed Stefan Langkamp as the chief executive officer, sources told ET. He comes from British telecom major Vodafone, where he has served as director for global IT & service operations besides holding other positions.

Sunil Ranka, who was in the finance team of Vodafone Essar, will be the chief financial officer (CFO) for Indus Towers, which has nearly 70,000 towers across 16 circles where Vodafone has a presence.

P Swaminathan will take over as chief operating officer (COO) of the company. He was earlier the executive director for Bharti Infratel (Bharti Airtel’s tower arm) and, prior to that, led the integrated Tamil Nadu as a director & CEO for Bharti.

Sources said Indus was hiring aggressively and had already put together around 500 people for various operations across India. “Some of these people came from the three companies while others have been hired from outside. The major part of hiring is almost over now,” one of the sources said.

The Delhi-headquartered company has offices across the country and is now working towards getting tenants on its telecom towers. “Indus is likely to attract many mobile operators as tenants due to the high visibility of the three players and the availability of three assured tenants in the form of JV partners,” an analyst said.

New operators who have received spectrum as well as the old players who have been allocated airwaves in new circles are looking at tower companies to expand operations. It will save them capex as well as the time to market. The impending rollouts by players like Unitech, Videocon-promoted Datacom, Loop Telecom and Aircel provide significant opportunities for Indus.

Also, Indus has a large number of towers in rural areas, where setting up towers is difficult. These towers are expected to generate good revenues for the company.

“Indus is also likely to undertake a major part of passive infrastructure expansion required by Bharti, Vodafone and Idea, giving it ample business,” the source said.

Bharti Infratel and Vodafone Essar have transferred around 30,000 towers each to Indus. Infratel continues to operate the passive infrastructure of Bharti Airtel in seven circles. Bharti and Vodafone each have 42% equity stake in Indus while the balance 16% is held by Idea, which has pooled in with 10,000 towers.

Indus Towers also plans to make an initial public offering in the next two-three years to double its tower strength. The company’s competitors include Reliance Telecom Infrastructure, Tatas’ Wireless Tata Telecom Infrastructure (WTTI) as well as independent tower companies like Quipo and GTL

[Honest 836]

Indus to add 24,000 towers

2 Oct, 2008, 0309 hrs IST, ET Bureau

MUMBAI: InduS Towers, the world’s largest telecom tower company, will add nearly 24,000 towers to its portfolio during the current fiscal, taking the

total count to around one lakh.

The three joint venture partners in Indus — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular — will pump in Rs 10,000 - Rs 11,000 crore this finan-cial year for increasing the number of towers, informed sources revealed.

Indus currently has around 80,000 towers and the growth has been rapid. The JV had just 60,000 towers when it was announced in December last year.

“A large part of these new towers will be set up in rural areas, which will lead to the next wave of wireless growth. Indus is looking at capturing business from new operators which have received spectrum as well as the old players who have been allocated airwaves in new circles. Wider reach and presence will place Indus in an advantageous position vis-a-vis other tower companies,” said sources close to the development.

These impending rollouts by players like Unitech, Videcon-promoted Data-com, Loop Telecom, Swan Telecom and Aircel provide significant oppor-tunities for Indus. With the current competitive scenario, they will have to take services of tower companies to reduce capex as well as time-to-market.

“Indus is also likely to undertake a major part of passive infrastructure ex-pansion required by Bharti, Vodafone and Idea, giving it ample business,” sources said.

While there has been a deluge of tower companies in India, independent as well as arms of operators, it is only the large players which are expected to survive in the long run.

That is because they offer wide reach, allowing fast expansion for any operator.

Indus is learnt to be attracting interest from most of the existing as well as new telecom players due to its robust portfolio. The company will also list on the bourses in the next two-three years.

While the top three GSM operators are the promoters of Indus, none of them has a majority control. The company has been formed by merging the passive infrastructure assets of the three players in 15 of the 22 tele-com circles. Bharti Airtel, through its tower arm Bharti Infratel, has 42% stake in Indus, Vodafone Essar 42% and Idea Cellular has 16%.

Bharti Infratel will transfer around 30,000 towers to Indus, but will con-tinue to own and operate the remaining around 23,000 towers in the seven circles outside Indus.

Vodafone has transferred its entire portfolio of 30,000 towers to Indus while Idea Cellular has transferred nearly 10,000 towers in 9 circles out of the 13 service areas where it operates.