Bharti Infratel, the infrastructure arm of Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel, is mulling listing of the company in 2-3 years to monetise the assets, a senior executive of the company said today.
"We will look at listing of Bharti Infratel in 2-3 years," Bharti Enterprises MD Akhil Gupta said.
Gupta has recently been elevated as the Deputy Group CEO & MD of Bharti Enterprises. He will take specific charge of the tower infrastructure business as the vice-chairman & MD, Bharti Infratel.
Bharti Infratel has partnered Vodafone Essar Ltd and Idea Cellular to form Indus Towers Ltd, an independent tower company to provide passive infrastructure services in India.
Indus Towers, with approximately 70,000 sites, will be formed by merging the passive infrastructure assets of the three companies across 16 telecom circles in India.
The 16 telecom circles are Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), UP (East), UP (West) and West Bengal. Bharti Infratel will have to transfer approximately 30,000 towers to Indus Towers.
Bharti Infratel will operate the passive infrastructure in the remaining 7 circles of Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, North East and Orissa.
Bharti Infratel will be managed and run independently and shall offer passive infrastructure services to all telecom operators and wireless service providers on a non-discriminatory basis. It will own approximately 20,000 sites at inception.
Reliance Communications has scrapped its plans for listing because of the current volatility in the stock markets.
