TELECOM TOWER INDUSTRY OF INDIA

The market size of the telecom tower industry of India is about INR 775bn (as of 2008). In the year 2008 around 182,000 more towers were needed and this requirement is expected to climb up to 554,000 by the year 2015, which is a sharp 17% increase in the tower requirements. This clearly shows how much opportunity is present in the Indian Telecom Tower industry.

Reasons for High Need of Towers:

• The main reason that acts as the major blocking stone in decreasing this gap is the sharing of infrastructure in India is very low and is limited. Government of India with its TRAI, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India wing took several initiatives to encourage the sharing of infrastructure by granting subsidies from its funds.

In the past 2 years, the major operators of telecom have separated its tower related businesses into separate firms. As the standalone players find it difficult to compete with its 3000-5000 towers and also as the new entrants need a minimum of at least 20,000 towers for a decent country wide roll out, they have started entering into tie ups, mergers and sell outs with other large players to reduce their risks.

Majority of the telecom operators’ use shared telecom infrastructure:

Source: Company websites, Telecom India Daily Apr 2009, Light Reading Asia Apr 2009, COAI Data, AUSPf Data, Marketing WhiteBook 2010

The market in India is mainly dominated by a few players that are owned or controlled by the operators such as Indus Towers, Idea, Reliance infratel, Bharti Infratel, Vodafone Essar, Independent Tower Infrastructure companies and others.

The major Tower companies in India and their share:

The telecom operators’ growth in India is mainly dependant on the increase in subscriber base, so the way to increase the subscriber base is through larger investments in the Tower industry and as seen it is an absolute necessity.