No immediate plans for tower unit IPO: Airtel

PTI Updated - March 24, 2011 at 04:36 PM.

Telecom major Bharti airtel on Thursday said it has no immediate plans for an initial public offering of its telecom tower units.

“There are no immediate plans of bringing out an IPO — either for Bharti Infratel or Indus Towers,” Bharti Enterprises Deputy Group CEO Mr Akhil Gupta told reporters here.

Bharti Infratel, with over 30,000 towers, is the mobile tower business of the telecom firm. Mr Gupta is also the Managing Director of Bharti Infratel.

Indus Towers is one of the largest mobile tower companies in India, in which Vodafone Essar and the Bharti Group own 42 per cent each in the joint venture, while Idea Cellular holds 16 per cent.

Asked about rolling out of its broadband wireless access (BWA) services, Mr Gupta said the company is looking at launching the services in the next few months.

“We would look at announcing the launch of BWA services in the next few months,” he said.

However, he did not give a specific timeframe for the rollout of services.

BWA spectrum enables high-speed Internet access as well as Internet telephony and TV services. It can also be used for voice and high-speed data services.

Bharti airtel had paid Rs 3,314 crore for BWA bandwidth.

Published on March 24, 2011 11:06