Indus Towers will now spend less, as the telecom tower infrastructure company is shifting focus from building more towers to adding more clients to existing towers.
Indus Towers chief executive officer B S Shantharaju said on Wednesday that the company’s capital expenditure would be at least 40 per cent lower this year, than it was in the last two years. This would be completely funded by internal accruals.
“We will be adding more towers, but not like we did three years ago,” he said. “The game is not about increasing the number of towers; the game now is to get more tenants on existing towers.” The company, he added, is not interested in acquiring towers to enhance its portfolio.
Indus Towers is a joint venture between the country’s top three telecom operators — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. Ever since telecom tower infrastructure sharing was permitted, the company expanded fast — and now has 110,000 towers across 16 circles.
Indus now expects growth to come from increased infrastructure utilisation and hence more tenancies. “Many areas still have single operators, and there is opportunity,” said Shantharaju. The company expects its tenancy ratio to go up to 2.25 in the next three years from current 1.95. Their tenancies do not include the extra business the company has bagged due to increased opportunities in the form of 3G rollouts by operators.
Technological innovation, which is underway like wimax rollouts expected this year along with continued expansion of 3G coverage, is yet another opportunity for the company. Bimal Dayal, chief operating officer of Indus Towers, said consumers now use the mobile phone for a lot more activities than they did five years ago. “Earlier it was only voice, now they are using it for data,” he noted.
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A recent move by the Supreme Court to cancel 122 licences issued in 2008 has seen a few of them exit the business. But that does not seem to have spoilt the party for Indus, which is getting 86 per cent of its business from its three promoter companies. “The impact on us is minimal,” the CEO said, without giving anymore details.
Competition in the telecom tower sector which has been a cause for concern too seems to have stabilised. The company does not expect any more new competition to come into the already fragmented market. “From the entry level,” Shantharaju said, “there is nothing much left where someone else can come. That stage has gone.”
The company announced an initiative to reduce the usage of diesel to run towers, by using methods like electric batteries besides solar- and wind-based electricity to power them up. The company has already made 8,000 sites diesel-free, and plan to take this number to 20,000 in a year. It will also pass on a part of the saving in operating expenditure to the clients. “This will make us more competitive,” said Dayal.