Indus Towers-Bharti Infratel merger: What this means for telecom tower biz

With 163,000 towers across telecom circles, the combined entity will be locking horns with Reliance Jio, but expect some challenging times for the next 12 months as tenancies drop

The consolidation of the Indian telecom tower business has taken a giant leap with Indus Towers' merger into Bharti Infratel. After this move, there will be only three major players in the game (and a smaller one, BSNL), compared with as many as nine slugging it out for the mobile tower sweepstakes earlier. Yet analysts say that in the next 12 months with the merger of Vodafone and Idea and the closure of many telcos as much as a fifth (200,000) of the 100,000, tenancies currently on the towers will not be there, putting pressure on revenues as well as