Bharti Airtel Halts Sale of Base Stations to Helios Towers

Bharti Airtel, India telecommunications giant with operational bases in 17 African countries said that it will discontinue the sale of its towers in Tanzania and Chad to Helios Towers Africa (HTA).

Airtel boosts of over 68.3 million subscribers on the African continent.

Airtel had signed a deal to sell about 3,100 telecoms towers in four African countries to Helios Towers.

Helios Towers, an independent telecommunications towers company,  on the other hand had announced that it raised $630 million from investors to help buy the telecoms towers, Airtel seemed less concerned, as it has stamped not to go ahead with transactions.

It was noted that part of the money raised Helios Tower was meant to cement the Airtel transaction and then part of it used for other transactions.

Airtel is reportedly 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.

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

But, in a stock market statement, last week, 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,” read 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.