Bharti Infratel, the telecom arm of Bharti Airtel has said that its consolidated revenue, including that from Indus Towers, is expected to take a hit of around Rs 780 crore on an annual basis, thanks to the exit of Vodafone and Idea Cellular from co-located mobile towers. Following the completion of Vodafone-Idea merger, the companies have served exit notices to Bharti Infratel and its subsidiary Indus Towers from 27,447 co-located mobile towers on a consolidated basis.
“The aforesaid co-locations contribute to 13.7% of the total co-locations basis as on June 30, 2018. This is likely to result in a net reduction of consolidated service revenue of approximately Rs 60-65 crores per month with effect from September 1, 2018,” Bharti Infratel said in a regulatory filing, as reported by PTI.
It added that the adverse impact on revenue would be mitigated by exit charges and incremental revenues on account of anticipated new network rollouts by the operators going forward. Bharti Infratel and Vodafone own around 42% stake each in Indus Towers and rest of the stake is held by Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular.
Vodafone and Idea have merged their mobile businesses and now they are in the process of consolidating assets to trim operational and capital expenses. In other news, Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers announced a merger to form the largest telecom tower company outside China.
