American Tower has agreed to buy Bharti Airtel’s Nigerian towers for just over $1 billion. The holding company for Bharti Airtel’s African operations will sell 4,800 towers to American Tower and then lease them back. The deal will help Bharti Airtel reduce its debt load and will expand American Tower’s African presence. The company already owns towers in Ghana, South Africa and Uganda.
African towers are trading hands as the emerging wireless market transitions from carrier-owned towers to multitenant cell sites. Etisalat Nigeria recently announced the sale of 2,136 of its towers to IHS Holding Limited. Etisalat will lease space on the towers and use the proceeds from the sale to accelerate its 2G and 3G rollout.
Bharti Airtel previously sold approximately 3,100 African towers to Helios Towers Africa. The carrier said the towers span four nations but did not name the countries. Nigeria’s Leadership has reported that Bharti Airtel Africa wants to sell as many as 15,000 of its towers across 17 countries.
For American Tower, this is the second major transaction announced within a week. Late last week, the company said it plans to purchase more than 6,400 towers from Telecom Italia’s TIM Cellular for roughly $1.2 billion. TIM is a Brazilian carrier and, like Bharti Airtel in Africa, is unloading cell towers in an effort to focus on providing cellular service to customers.
The same trend has been playing out in the United States, with AT&T and T-Mobile US both selling towers or tower rights in order to focus on their core businesses. Verizon Wireless still owns a large number of towers, and the financial community has been buzzing all fall with talk that the carrier will follow in AT&T’s footsteps by selling those towers to Crown Castle.
In other news, BlackBerry is making an unabashed bid for iPhone customers, and Uber’s German unit is giving in to legal pressure. For more on that see today’s video below:
