Bharti Airtel will seek infrastructure sharing deals in Africa to make the most of its purchase of Zain's African assets, the company revealed yesterday.
The operator is already in talks about fiber and tower sharing, and plans to form a tower company in each country over the next few quarters to support this, according to the Economic Times.
In a conference call, Bharti's CEO International, Manoj Kohli, said sharing infrastructure would reduce the costs of extending the respective networks into smaller towns.
The operator also plans to take advantage of any universal service obligation funds where available.
Bharti plans to launch in the 15 African markets in October, and has allocated $800 million in capex for the first year of ownership.
Kohli also revealed that he expects the operator's annual debt repayment cost for the acquisition to be around $200 million.
MORE ARTICLES ON AFRICA, BHARTI AIRTEL, M&A, NETWORK SHARING, ZAIN