Bharti in infra sharing talks in Africa

Bharti Airtel, India's largest telco, which expanded operations to 16 African countries last year, is in discussions with five leading operators - Etisalat, MTN , France Telecom (Orange), Millicom and Vodafone - for telecoms infrastructure sharing including towers and fibre in that continent, according to a top executive. 

According to Manoj Kohli, Bharti Airtel's chief executive for international operations, the company had hived off the tower business in all the African countries in which it opearted into separate companies.
 
He said talks had started for sharing the company's 16 tower companies, though it was too early to predict if it could replicate the Indian model in Africa. 

The reference is to its venture Indus Towers in India, which it jointly owns with its competitors- Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular, with the trio combining their physical infrastructure assets in the company. 

Bharti and Vodafone had a 42-per cent stake in each company while the rest was owned by Idea Cellular.
 
Indus runs over 100,000 towers while Bharti's own company, Bharti Infratel, has 30,000 towers. This model of separation of companies into groups and then looking for strategic investors is also now being used by other operators such as Reliance Communications. 

Ruling out immediate acquisitions in Africa to expand operations to more countries Kohli said that the top priority was to turn around its existing businesses there. 

He said he was confident that the company was on track to meet its targets of $5 billion revenues, $2 billion EBIDTA and 100 million subscribers there by the end of March '13.
 
With a base of just over 44 million users, the Africa business generated about $2.9 billion in revenues for the year-ended March '11.