www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With the aim to become a key player in the country’s mobile tower market, $1.8 billion has been offered by Indian mobile masts firm GTL Infrastructure to buy the tower assets of Aircel. GTL’s towers would expand to 32,000 in India with the 84-billion-rupee deal.

17.50 billion rupees in equity will be directly contributed by GTL for a special purpose vehicle to make the acquisition. Another 16.5 billion will be brought by parent Global Group. A debt of 50 billion rupees will also be raised by the company to fund the acquisition.

According to Naresh Singh, principal research analyst at Gartner, with so many telecom companies looking at outsourcing of towers, gaining tower assets will favour GTL Infrastructure in getting additional business. An additional 20,000 telecom towers would be taken on lease by Aircel from GTL Infra over the next three years.