Airtel divests African telecoms tower assets to Eaton Towers

Manoj Kohli, Chairman,
Bharti Airtel International 

Alan Harper, CEO - Eaton Towers

Bharti Airtel Limited, a leading global telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa [through its subsidiary company Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV (“Airtel”)] and Eaton Towers, a leading independent telecoms tower company in Africa, today announced an agreement for the divestment of over 3500 telecoms towers from Airtel to Eaton Towers.  

Highlights: 

• Airtel to sell and lease back over 3500 towers to Eaton in 6 countries across its African operations under a 10-year contract. 

• Expands Eaton Towers’ coverage in Africa to 7 countries with over 5000 towers. 

• Follows Airtel’s and Eaton Towers’ strategies to drive cost efficiencies throughout the industry via the use of shared passive infrastructure. 

The agreements will allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, enable it to deleverage through debt reduction, and will significantly reduce its on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure.

For Eaton Towers, the acquisition is a major step towards the scale needed to provide shared telecoms infrastructure solutions, with its customers benefiting from lower operating costs, expanded network coverage and capacity and improved quality of service. 

The agreements are subject to statutory and regulatory approvals in the respective countries. 

Commenting on the development, Manoj Kohli, Chairman, Bharti Airtel International Netherlands BV (BAIN), said: 

“We are delighted to announce this agreement, which represents the next phase of Airtel’s growth journey in Africa. We are the pioneers and strong proponents of telecoms infrastructure sharing, which results in industry-wide cost efficiencies. The agreement with Eaton Towers is an extension of this philosophy and will lead to far superior utilization of passive infrastructure and help drive the proliferation of affordable mobile services across Africa.” 

Alan Harper, CEO of Eaton Towers added: “This is a transformational deal which gives Eaton Towers the most diversified tower portfolio across Africa. We are proud to be chosen by Airtel as their key partner in these 6 countries.”