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Spice to sell telecom towers to Srei Infra
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 29 December 2007, 01:41 IST
New Delhi: Mobile services provider Spice Communications is selling its tower arm to Srei Infrastructure in a $125 million deal. Once the deal was struck, the towers from Spice may be added to Srei?s subsidiary Quipo Telecom, a standalone tower company.
Spice has also said that it was availing loans for up to $400 million from Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking and another $410 million from China Development Bank for expanding its networks in Karnataka and Punjab, the two circles where it currently offers mobile services. These proposals have been cleared by the board of directors of Spice Communications, during the meet on December 25, 2007, the company informed the BSE.
Spice joins other leading telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, Reliance Communication and the Tatas who have hived off their tower arm. Spice has about 875 towers in the two telecom circles combined. The company also becomes the first company to completely sell off its tower arm.
When contacted, Mcorp chairman, BK Modi said that the deal was not yet completed: ?Srei is the front-runner to bag our towers,? he added. On the $810-million loan, Modi said that the resources would be used to expand the company?s operations in Punjab and Karnataka. Earlier this month, leading GSM players Vodafone Essar, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular, had announced that they were pooling in their passive infrastructure across 16 telecom circles to form Indus Towers.