Mobile tower tenancy to double in three years: GTL Infrastructure

Telecoms tower operator GTL Infrastructure  is in talks with new operators to rent out towers and expects per tower tenancy to more than double in three years, its top official said on Friday.

GTL has a tenancy of about 1.17 tenants per tower, which is expected to rise to 2.4 in the next three years, chairman Manoj Tirodkar said. Rival Indus Towers, India's biggest tower firm with more than 100,000 telecom towers, has an average 1.7 tenants per tower. "We are already in talks with new operators. At this moment 10 operators are our customers and we will be able to sign on new operators very soon," Manoj Tirodkar told the Reuters Trading India chatroom.

GTL Infra on Thursday said it has agreed to buy mobile firm Aircel's telecom towers for $1.8 billion, thus adding 17,500 towers to its existing 14,500. It will also build another 20,000 towers, which will be leased to Aircel (See: GTL Infra set to buy Aircel's tower business for Rs8,500 crore).

There is demand from both existing and new telecom operators," he said.

Mobile operators in India, the world's fastest growing market with monthly signings of new users at more than 14 million, are looking to cut costs by sourcing telecom masts from independent tower firms.

"The (telecom) industry is likely to be dominated by real issues like operations and management costs and energy management reduction and RF (radio frequency) planning challenges," he said.