Idea Cellular completes sale of standalone tower business to ATC

India's third largest telecom operator Idea Cellular today said that it has completed the sale of its 9,900 mobile towers to American Tower Corporation's Indian arm for Rs 4,000 crore.

Idea said: "Vodafone's sale of its standalone tower business to ATC has completed for an enterprise value of Rs 3850 crore, in April."

Post the completion of Vodafone India and Idea merger, the 6,300 co-located tenancies of the two operators on the combined standalone tower portfolio will collapse into single tenancies over a period of two years without the payment of exit penalties, the company said in a regulatory filing.

"The receipt of both these proceeds prior to completion was anticipated and provided for, in the Vodafone India and Idea merger agreement and hence would not affect the agreed terms of the merger, including the amount of debt which Vodafone will contribute to the combined entity at the closing of merger transaction," the telco further added.

With this, both Idea and Vodafone India have now monetized the standalone tower assets for a total enterprise value of Rs. 78.5 billion, as per the timelines provided at the time of the announcement in November 2017, strengthening the financial position of the merged entity.

The telco has expanded its Voice over LTE services across nine major markets - Mumbai, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, UP East, UP West, Bihar & Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

As a part of the launch offer the company is offering 30 GB free data to its VoLTE users along with 10 GB data on making the first VoLTE call, additional 10 GB on giving feedback on the service after 4 weeks, and another 10 GB on giving feedback after 8 weeks.

With this launch, Idea VoLTE is now available across 15 circles which cover 85 percent of India's mobile subscriber base, making it the biggest VoLTE network by a GSM operator.

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Earlier this month, Idea had launched VoLTE in Maharashtra & Goa, MP & Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, AP & Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.