The Indian mobile industry, and its closely tied tower industry, is going through a period of unprecedented market restructuring which merits close analysis both by local market participants and by the international tower industry, seeking benchmarks to understand the prospective impact of consolidation. In this editorial, TowerXchange summarises the specifics of both the MNO and towerco consolidation, reviews the tower assets coming to market, and forecasts the future of the Indian tower landscape.
While in the short term consolidation and capitulation of India’s myriad of minority market share carriers to perhaps five all-India carriers will prompt negotiations to cancel the leases of parallel infrastructure and lower the glass ceiling on tenancy ratios, the truth is that the perceptions of that glass ceiling had been artificially high; India’s deeply indebted carriers were never likely to survive in the long term.
