BSNL to sell 10,000 towers as part of monetisation plans

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has kicked off a process to sell 10,000 telecom towers to meet targets laid out by the Centre as part of its national monetisation pipeline (NMP), people aware of the development told.

The state-owned telecom services provider has pegged the enterprise value of the towers to be sold at 4,000 crore and engaged KPMG as a financial advisor to administer the sale, they said.

BSNL, which provides telecom services in every part of the country except Mumbai and Delhi, owns 68,000 telecom towers. It is selling only those towers that have co-location arrangements with third party telecom service providers such as Reliance Jio and Airtel, people cited above said. BSNL did not comment when contacted. KPMG said it would not comment on company matters.

Industry watchers believe the tower sale could attract interest from Brookfieldowned Data Infrastructure Trust, which acquired over 130,000 towers of Reliance Jio in 2019, and Indus Towers, which is partly owned by Airtel.

Tower infrastructure sharing is seen as a means of cost optimisation for telecom companies. Hence, the sector has seen significant consolidation and the emergence of independent telecom tower companies such as American Tower Corporation (ATC), which provides tower infrastructure support to telcos.