According to industry sources, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has initiated the process to sell 10,000 telecom towers to meet the targets laid out by the government as part of its national monetisation pipeline (NMP). To this end, BSNL has reportedly pegged the enterprise value of the towers to be sold at Rs 40 billion and has engaged KPMG as a financial advisor to administer the sale.
The operator owns approximately 68,000 telecom towers in the country and is selling only those towers that have co-location arrangements with third party telecom service providers such as Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.
As part of NMP targets, BSNL has to sell 13,567 towers by financial year 2025 and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), which operates in Delhi and Mumbai, has to sell 1,350 towers. Altogether the two telcos is expected to sell 14,917 towers in a phased manner.
