Open to partnership with infrastructure cos

Our Bureau

New Delhi, July 24 The US-based cellular infrastructure firm American Tower Corporation on Tuesday formally announced its entry into the Indian market and said that it was in talks with major Indian telecom operators for possible alliances.

ATC’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr James Taiclet, said the company saw India as a high growth market. “We’ve got plenty of financial capacity. We have substantial resources we can put into the country. We are initiating conversations, serious ones, with the carriers in the country to help create a commercial collocation passive infrastructure business,” he said at a press conference, without giving further details.

Mr Taiclet said that American Tower is open to any form of partnership, including acquiring a stake in an existing infrastructure company or enter into joint venture.

India is the world’s fastest-growing mobile services market, with more than six million subscribers signing up each month. With tariffs being one of the lowest in the world operators are looking to share their infrastructure such as towers.

Bharti Airtel, Essar, Reliance Communication and Idea Cellular have already announced that they were hiving off their infrastructure into a separate company in a bid to unlock the value. Reliance recently sold off 5 per cent stake in its tower business for Rs 1,400 crore. According to industry sources, Reliance is looking at further diluting its stake by around 25 per cent and in talks with at least three global majors, including American Tower Corp.

Mr Taiclet said American Tower has the capacity and appetite for significant investments in the Asia-Pacific region. The company will open its regional headquarters in New Delhi and will name a regional president shortly. ATC owns and operates over 22,000 sites in the US, Mexico and Brazil. It also owns about 2,000 revenue producing rooftop and tower sites.

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