American Tower Corporation (ATC), the mother of Ghana’s leading independent tower company, ATC Ghana has sold 100% of its towers in India to Data Infrastructure Trust (DIT) for a reported $2.5 billion and exited that Indian market.
DIT is an infrastructure investment Trust backed by Brookfield Asset Management and investor affiliates such as British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and GIC.
The deal, closed on September 12, was approved by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), and involved the purchase of approximately 76,000 communication sites.
With this acquisition, it stated the Brookfield-led consortium now boasts a portfolio of 257,000 telecom sites across India, making it the biggest independent towerco in that market.
DIT, which already includes Summit Digitel and Crest Digitel, will now combine these assets with ATC India under a newly launched brand, Altius. With this, Altius has become India’s largest tower infrastructure company, pipping Indus Towers.
Meanwhile, ATC remains the biggest towerco in Ghana, commanding an estimated 85% of co-location towers and about 60% of all towers in the country.
The company has become so powerful that almost all industry players is indebted to it to the tune of millions of dollars, except it former bedmate, MTN Ghana, which is currently the only significant market power (SMP) in the Ghanaians telecoms market.
Last year ATC unplugged to ISPs – Surfline and Busy Ghana for failing to pay their legacy death and recurrent bills. Just this year, ATC Ghana also unplugged Telecel Ghana, the number two in the telecoms market, for allegedly failing to meet their monthly obligations. But Telecel denied owing ATC and the latter was instructed by the industry regulator to reconnect Telecel pending dispute resolution by the regulator.
