Bharti Airtel said its deal with Helios Towers Africa to sell telecom towers in Tanzania and Tchad has fallen through.
“…the agreements for sale of tower assets in Tanzania and Tchad between the respective subsidiaries of Bharti Airtel Limited and have lapsed and therefore stands terminated,” said the company.
In July last year, Bharti Airtel had announced that it was selling over 3,100 telecoms towers to Helios in four African countries.
The deal was supposed to help Airtel deleverage through debt reduction and reduce ongoing capital expenditure.
It also envisaged that tower operations-related personnel will be transferred from Airtel to HTA The agreements to let Airtel to focus on its core business and customers.
It was supposed to “significantly reduce its ongoing capital expenditure on passive infrastructure.”
Manoj Kohli, Chairman, Bharti Airtel International Netherlands BV had said: “The agreement is another milestone in Airtel’s growth journey in Africa. Airtel pioneered the concept of a separate tower entity to promote infrastructure sharing in India and this agreement is a continuation of that philosophy. It is an im portant step towards the consolidation of tower assets across Africa that will drive industry – wide cost efficiencies through infrastructure sharing. The agreement will further help in accelerating the growth of telecom services in the Continent and at the same time benefit the environment by avoiding duplication of infrastructure.”
Bharti Airtel did not specify whether the entire deal has lapsed only part of it.