The firm operates 121,000 cell towers and other sites across India.
India-based tower owner Indus Towers plans to invest nearly $15 million to deploy 500 new telecoms sites, including new cell towers, across India within the next 12 months, Indian press reported.
Of the planned sites, 100 cell towers have been already deployed in 50 Indian cities including Amritsar, Coimbatore, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jaipur-Agra Highway, Mysore, Mumbai and New Delhi. The company said the new towers are camouflaged sites and are powered with electricity.
“We have already invested around $3.7 million in setting up over 100 next-generation mobile towers,” said Indus Towers CEO Bimal Dayal. “They are future ready for projects like smart cities, can be used for street lighting and surveillance.”
Indus Towers is a joint venture between local telecommunications companies Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. It is currently the world’s largest mobile tower company with more than 121,000 towers. The company operates in 15 of 22 telecom circles in the country, including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Kerala, Rajasthan, Kolkata, UP East,UP West, West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Mumbai,Punjab, Haryana, and Tamil Nadu.
Bharti Airtel invests to deploy fiber optic infrastructure linking India with Myanmar
In related news, Bharti Airtel announced it is funding a fiber-optic cable between India and Myanmar with the aim of improving internet connectivity in the country.
The Indian telco did not provide specific information about the total investment figure and its partners in this initiative. The 6,500 kilometer terrestrial cable is set to connect to Airtel’s landing stations in Chennai on the east coast and Mumbai on the west.
Ajay Chitkara, CEO for global voice and data at Bharti Airtel, said the new infrastructure will allow the telco to launch new connectivity services in order to take advantage of Myanmar’s growing telecom market.
