Unitech Wireless / Telenor signed a tower sharing agreement with Quippo and the tower arm of TTSL (both of whom merged
recently). The merged entity has 18k towers currently, increasing to 22k in April 2009 and to 40k in the next 12 months. This rollout plan is to meet the GSM launch by Tata Tele, planned by end-2009.
Quippo is much smaller than Indus (93k towers) and Reliance Infratel (~50k), so the decision comes as a bit of a surprise. However, it may have been driven by: (i) commercial reasons (Bharti and RTIL have high capex recovery expectations of 9%-13%), and (ii)
incumbents’ urge to delay/limit Unitech’s launch. That said, Telenor is only committing 15k sites to Quippo from the present portfolio, and it retains the option to tie up with other towercos, as and when the need arises.
The committed 15k sites have already been identified for the proposed rollout by 2H09. However, the initial number of committed sites is on the lower side especially for 1800 Mhz and could be an early indicator of Telenor’s selective strategy.