India's unlisted mobile phone operator Aircel Ltd. has signed an agreement valued at more than $400 million to share about 5,000 of its telecom towers with Datacom Solutions Pvt. Ltd., senior executives at both companies said Wednesday.
"The (tower) sites will be taken over by Datacom Solutions over 16 months," Aircel's Chief Operating Officer, Gurdeep Singh, told Dow Jones Newswires. "This will increaseour tenancy ratio."
He declined to provide any further details.
Aircel - of which Malaysia's Maxis Communications Bhd. holds 74% - has 15,000 towers and operates in 18 of India's 22 telecom service areas. It has licenses to operate in all 22 areas.
The company has been in the news recently for planning to sell a stake in its tower operations, with firms such as Wireless Tata Telecom Infrastructure Ltd. and GTL Infrastructure Ltd. confirming their interest.
Datacom Solutions - a company jointly held by Mahendra Nahata, managing director of Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd., and the Dhoot family, founders of consumer goods maker Videocon Industries Ltd. - holds a license to offer mobile telecom services in India, but is yet to start services.
Videocon Industries' chairman Venugopal Dhoot said the deal will help Datacom roll out services across all circles faster. The company aims to start mobile services by the end of this year, he added.
Existing mobile operators are looking to share infrastructure with new players to maximize use of their towers and other assets to boost revenue in the world's fastest-growing cellphone services market.
For new entrants, sharing infrastructure means huge savings on investments and lets them roll out services much faster.
Recently, Reliance Infratel Ltd., a unit of Reliance Communications Ltd., signed two such deals with new mobile phone operators S Tel Pvt. Ltd. and Etisalat DB Telecom Pvt. Ltd.
