India's third largest telco, Idea Cellular Ltd. has completed the sale of approximately 9,900 stand-alone towers to American Tower Corp. subsidiary ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. for an enterprise value of 40 billion rupees, or about $590 million, according to a May 31 Bombay Stock Exchange filing.
The completion concludes a two-phase buyout of about 20,000 towers belonging to Vodafone India and Idea Cellular by ATC, boosting its tower portfolio in India to 80,00. Indeed, in April, Vodafone India sold its stand-alone tower business to ATC for 38.50 billion rupees.
American Tower, its Boston-based ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pte. Ltd. subsidiary, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular agreed to treat each other as preferred partners, the statement said.
Vodafone India and Idea Cellular announced in November 2017 that they will sell their stand-alone towers to the local unit of ATC in cash. The two Indian telcos are headed for a merger which will see the roughly 6,300 co-located tenancies of the two operators on the combined stand-alone tower portfolio collapse into single tenancies for a period of two years, according to the May 31 filing.
Consolidation continues to be a trend in India's telecom industry.
ATC's Indian competitors Indus Towers Ltd. and Bharti Infratel Ltd., which hold 123,000 and 91,000 towers respectively, are also set to merge their operations to create a $14.6 billion telecom infrastructure giant that will operate in 22 telecom service areas across India, Bharti Airtel had said in an April 25 exchange filing.
As of May 31, US$1 was equivalent to 67.45 Indian rupees.
