Bharti to follow Indian model for African towers
10 Jun 2010
Bharti Airtel will form separate tower companies in each of the African nations where it is present, marking the commencement of efforts to collaborate with other mobile phone firms to share costs and save money.
The 15 independent entities will be replicas of the Indus Towers arm owned by Bharti, along with Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular in India, and African mobile companies will be invited to be part of the planned new ventures, Manoj Kohli, chief executive officer of Bharti's international unit, told The Economic Times on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, India's largest mobile phone firm announced the closure of its $9-billion purchase, not including the $1.7-billion debt it is assuming, of the African operations of Zain Telecom. Indus, the world's largest tower operator, is owned 42 per cent each by Bharti and Vodafone. Idea owns the rest.
''We believe that Bharti Airtel is pretty good with sharing as we have deals with our fiercest rivals in India, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular, and I am sure we can do the same in Africa,'' chairman and managing director Sunil Mittal said on Tuesday.
Bharti is aiming to more than double its user base in Africa to 100 million within three years. Kohli said he is confident that Bharti will become the continent's largest service provider, displacing MTN, by 2015. ''For the first 12 months, we will be focusing on the existing 15 countries. After that, we will expand to other regions in that continent.''
With 180 million users, Bharti is the world's fifth-largest phone firm by number of subscribers. It added 42 million users through the acquisition of Zain's African assets.
''We are the largest in emerging markets, India and Africa, and we will soon climb to No 3 from No 5 in the world in terms of customers. Bharti's global business will be far bigger than that in India over the next 10 years and we have all the capabilities to do that, we have the hunger and passion; a brand that can go global; a unique business model that can be transferred,'' Kohli said.