Tags: Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Indus Towers, Vodafone Essar, wireless infrastructure business

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular are the three major GSM mobile service providers in the Indian market and they face considerable challenge from the CDMA players.

These three companies have now announced the merger of their wireless infrastructure businesses.

They are collaborating in 16 circles and would now be sharing 70,000 tower units.

This merger also forms the world’s largest ‘independent’ tower company.

Bharti Airtel’s joint MD, Akhil Gupta had this to say on this merger: “The idea is that Indus will be a truly independent tower company, where no player enjoys a majority stake. We are looking at listing Indus Towers at the earliest, but it is for the new board of this company to set the time frame for this.”

The three companies added in a joint statement on this development: “The three companies will each merge their existing passive infrastructure assets in 16 telecom circles in India. Indus Towers will provide passive infrastructure services to all operators on a nondiscriminatory basis. Indus Towers will enable optimization of future tower roll-out and enhanced operational efficiency leading to opex and capex savings for its customers.”