Yesterday, Inside Towers told you Indian officials this week okayed American Tower Corp.’s acquisition of 51 percent of India’s gigantic Viom Networks, giving it control over 56,000 towers in India and more than doubling its inventory of 40,000 towers in the U.S. and globally. The Hindu BusinessLine yesterday got a hold of American Tower Chairman and CEO James Taiclet who told the publication ATC is now looking to build scale to ride on the telecom operator’s need for more tower sites for 3G and 4G roll out.
But what does the Viom acquisition mean for ATC?
“It attains our goal to be the No.1 independent tower company in the country. The integration will take a year or two. India becomes incredibly important for us, “ Taiclet said. “This transaction will make it a billion-dollar business for us for the calendar year 2016. From an asset perspective, this is the largest number of towers we have anywhere in the world.”
This deal is not representative of an overnight success. American Tower made its first investment in India in 2007, and Taiclet was asked what took so long to scale up?
“We have caught the wave at the right time. Between 2010 and 2013, the industry came to a grinding halt due to license cancellation and issues related to network equipment import ban. Scaling up prior to that would have meant scaling up at a high cost,” he said. “We have a disciplined program of valuing telecom assets. There were deals, which went for $200,000 a tower at that time. Meanwhile, our business has performed well despite these regulatory uncertainties. We are now ready to catch the wave that will come from 3G and 4G roll-outs by telecom operators like Vodafone, Reliance Jio and Airtel.”
