Indian Telecom giant, Bharti Airtel, will sell its telecommunication towers in Tanzania and Malawi in continuance of its disposal of mobile phone towers in Africa, Reuters news agency reports. The towers in Tanzania will go to Helios Towers, while while units in Malawi will go to Eaton Towers, both companies specialize in manage of phone masts and have been on an acquisition spree across Africa.
Mobile operators in the continent like Airtel have been selling towers to specialist tower firms and leasing them back to cut maintenance costs. The Tanzania sale will include about 1,000 towers, Reuters quotes a source who declined to be identified, because the deal has not been concluded. The source did not say how many towers in Malawi would be sold.
Bharti Airtel says it will sell 3,500 towers across six African countries to Eaton, and 3,100 masts in four countries to Helios. It has not given details on the countries involved.
“We’re talking 3,500 towers across six countries so it takes time to move those sorts of transactions forward but we would hope that sort of transaction timeframe would be realistic,”Eaton Chief Executive Alan Harper said, when asked by Reuters whether the transactions would be done by the end of the first quarter of 2015.
With its deal to purchase 3,100 telecom towers from Bharti Airtel, Helios Towers Africa says it will become the largest independent tower company in Africa the continent with a portfolio of 7,800 towers.
African telecom operators have been on a tower selling spree this year. In September, South Africa’s MTN, sold some 9,100 Nigerian towers to a new joint venture with IHS. The two companies have also had transactions in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda and Zambia.
