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Airtel halts sale of base stations to Helios Towers

Airtel halts sale of base stations to Helios Towers
Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba, IT in government editor
22 Jun 2015

Indian headquartered mobile phone carrier, Bharti Airtel, says intentions to sell telecoms towers in Tanzania and Chad to Helios Towers Africa (HTA) will no longer go ahead as planned.

In July last year the telco signed a deal to sell about 3,100 telecoms towers in four African countries to Helios Towers.

Although the financial details of the deal were not revealed at the time, Helios Towers, an independent telecommunications towers company, announced that it had raised $630 million from investors to help buy the telecoms towers.

It was noted that part of the money raised would be used for the Airtel transaction and then part of it used for other transactions.

According to reports Airtel was seeking to sell 15,000 African towers with sources saying that the telco could raise up to $2 billion in total from African tower sales.

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And Helios Towers said the purchase of the Airtel towers would expand its tower count in Africa to more than 7,800.

However, last week in a stock market statement Airtel noted that plans had lapsed and therefore terminated.

"With reference to the Press Release dated July 09, 2014 regarding ''Airtel divests telecoms tower assets to Helios Towers Africa'', Bharti Airtel has now informed BSE that the agreements for sale of tower assets in Tanzania and Chad between the respective subsidiaries of Bharti Airtel Limited and Helios Towers Africa have lapsed and therefore stands terminated," reads the statement.

The telecoms firm did not share further details on the reasons why the plans fell through.

In response to the Airtel statement Helios Towers noted the announcement by Bharti Airtel re: the agreement concerning telecoms towers in Tanzania and Chad.

"HTA places great value on its business partnership with Airtel and will continue to work with them in Tanzania and elsewhere, including Congo Brazzaville where HTA recently closed a similar transaction with Airtel," said the statement.

Airtel has operations in 17 African countries and over 68.3 million subscribers on the continent.

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