Bharti Infratel to ramp up tower network

Bharti Infratel Limited, the mobile tower arm of Bharti Airtel Limited, is planning to invest Rs 1,100 crore to set up around 4,800 new towers and to upgrade its network services. The investment would be made over the next 30 months.

India has a total 376,000 towers, of which the company has 80,656 towers. Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers have a combined market share of 37.8 per cent in the telecom towers space, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Group, said here on Thursday.

The company is bullish on the growth of data usage in the telecom sector backed by the roll-out of 3G and 4G services. “Data usage is seeing a growth of around 25 per cent quarter-on-quarter and increased 3G and 4G users will lead to exponential growth in the total data consumption,” he said.

The 3G data demand is expected to increase at a CAGR of 104 per cent to 1,427 million GBs (giga byte) per year in the financial year 2017, from an estimated 20 million GBs per year currently, he said.