Idea completes Rs4,000-cr sale of tower arm to ATC

Idea Cellular, which is in the last leg of regulatory approvals for the merger with Vodafone India, on Thursday said that it has completed the sale of its standalone 9,900 towers to ATC for Rs4,000 crore. The sale was made by the Kumar Mangalam Birla-led company divesting its entire stake in Idea Cellular Infrastructure Services?, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Idea?, to ATC.

Closure of the captive towers deal with Idea will conclude the Boston-based telecom tower company’s two?-stage acquisition of Vodafone India and Idea’s near 20,000-odd combined standalone towers for ?a total of ?Rs 7,850 crore.

Vodafone's sale of its standalone tower business to ATC was completed for an enterprise value of Rs3,850 crore, in April.

According to a regulatory filing, post the completion of Vodafone India and Idea merger, the 6,300 co-located tenancies of the two operators on the combined standalone tower portfolio will collapse into single tenancies over a period of two years without the payment of exit penalties.

Idea Cellular said both the telcos and ATC as a vendor "have agreed to treat each other as long-term preferred partners, subject to existing arrangements".

The buyout of Vodafone and Idea’s captive towers will boost ATC’s tower portfolio in India to nearly 80,000, taking it closer to market leader Indus Towers and Bharti Infratel who own 1,23,639 and 91,451 towers, respectively.