Growth Acceleration In-the-Works!
Bharti Infratel is India’s largest listed tower firm as it holds 42% equity in Indus Towers, which is a joint venture between Bharti, Vodafone India and Aditya Birla Telecom, which by itself India’s largest tower company. According to V&D-CMR estimates, Bharti Infratel owned and operated 35,905 towers with 69,137 colocations in 11 circles and clocked a 12 percent YoY growth in this business. The company did well during the stress test when floods hit Uttarakhand and the super cyclone Phailin hit the coastal belt of Orissa. Its robust processes helped restore operations in quick time ensuring vital telecom connectivity.
Going ahead, heavy investm ments in spectrum will lead to aggressive rollout of 3G and LTE networks in the current FY. It augurs well for the to tower infrastructure business wit with sharing of infrastructure picking i ki up further, the business growth can only get accelerated. RJio tying up with Bharti Infratel is a case in point. Given, that the whole ecosystem is set to reach a higher level of maturity with more and more compatible smartphones and feature phones being available at lower price points, thereby further increasing data consumption tower segment will also evolve. There will be further consolidation to drive efficiencies in the telecom towers business and Bharti Infratel is said to be on the lookout of such opportunities.