AMT Expanding in India?

American Tower’s Indian branch, ATC India, is one of the leading independent passive telecom infrastructure providers with over 13,000 towers across all 22 telecom circles in India, and there may be more. Bloomberg reported that Reliance Communication Ltd.’s sale of their Indian wireless infrastructure assets has drawn interest from ATC India. “Reliance Communications, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, is in talks to sell a majority stake in tower unit Reliance Infratel Ltd., three of the people said. The Mumbai-based business could fetch a valuation of about 200 billion rupees ($3.1 billion) including debt, two people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private,” according to Bloomberg.  This sale would help India’s fourth-largest wireless operator by subscribers cut debt that was 386.9 billion rupees ($6.07 billion) at the end of December. On the most recent quarterly conference call, President and CEO of American Tower, James Taiclet said, “Well our India business based on again our disciplined investments that we’ve made has always performed in line for us as far as a part of our portfolio. And now the environment is improving. Spectrum policy is moving towards a very rational endgame, allowing the major operators in India to have enough spectrum to go ahead and deploy advanced data services like we’ve just talked about in the remarks, in India, so that’s a plus. And we’re seeing a pickup in business there, especially in build-to-suit towers as well as in co-locations in India. So I do think we’re at the beginning of an upward cycle in the India market for tower leasing.”