Bharti Airtel to float one of their Tower subsidiaries (India)

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A stock market floatation of tower holding subsidiaries, the wholly owned Bharti Infratel and its smaller joint-venture with Vodafone and Idea Cellular, Indus Towers, has been mulled by India’s Bharti Airtel.

Around 100,000 towers are owned by Bharti Infratel while Indus has around 70,000 towers. 42% in Indus Towers is owned by Bharti Airtel and Vodafone each while remaining 16% is owned by Idea Cellular. Looking at the financial conditions of Infratel or Indus, Bharti may issue initial public offering in the next fiscal.

In 2007, Reliance Communications too sold a 5 percent stake in it towers business with an equity valuation of US$6.75 billion. A merged GSM tower business with 70,000 towers of RTIl could be worth around US$33 billion. However, it has to be kept in mind that RTIL is a whole operations business, whereas the Indus Towers is solely based on the passive infrastructure and does not include any of the RAN or antenna facilities.