The Hindu Business Line : Spice Comm in Rs 250-cr deal with UK Co

Spice Communications, a joint venture between B K Modi Group and Malaysia Telecom, has entered into a Rs 250 crore deal with UK-based Tower Vision for providing tower sites for the company's cellular network in Punjab and Karnataka. As part of the deal Tower Vision will build, own and operate 1,000 tower sites for Spice in the two States.

These towers will also be shared with other mobile service providers as part of the infrastructure sharing initiative.

The concept of tower management is still in its infancy stage in India but a number of companies are eyeing the market with operators looking to share the infrastructure in a bid to bring down the costs.

Cellular Tower

Tower management companies such as Tower Vision essentially take up the civil work related to erecting a cellular tower and then giving it out on lease to multiple operators.

"The advantage for us in working with a tower management company is that we can avoid having to invest capital in building new tower sites.

This helps us to deploy large amounts of capital elsewhere, which is otherwise tied up in building sites. Sharing of towers helps us in bringing down operational costs," said Mr Umang Das, Managing Director, Spice. Being the first company to lease out Tower Vision's services, Spice gets to choose the location of the towers according to its requirements.

Tower Vision is also talking to other operators for becoming the second tenant.

Other operators are also looking to enter into similar arrangements with tower management companies.

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