Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa and Eaton Towers, a leading independent telecoms tower company in Africa, today announced an agreement for the divestment of over 3,500 telecoms towers from Airtel to Eaton Towers.

Airtel to sell and lease back over 3500 towers to Eaton in 6 countries across its African operations under a 10-year contract.

Expands Eaton Towers' coverage in Africa to 7 countries with over 5,000 towers.

Follows Airtel's and Eaton Towers' strategies to drive cost efficiencies throughout the industry via the use of shared passive infrastructure.

The agreements will allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, enable it to deleverage through debt reduction, and will significantly reduce its on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure.

For Eaton Towers, the acquisition is a major step towards the scale needed to provide shared telecoms infrastructure solutions, with its customers benefiting from lower operating costs, expanded network coverage and capacity and improved quality of service.

The agreements are subject to statutory and regulatory approvals in the respective countries.

Commenting on the development, Manoj Kohli, chairman, Bharti Airtel International Netherlands BV (BAIN), said, ''We are delighted to announce this agreement, which represents the next phase of Airtel’s growth journey in Africa. We are the pioneers and strong proponents of telecoms infrastructure sharing, which results in industry-wide cost efficiencies. The agreement with Eaton Towers is an extension of this philosophy and will lead to far superior utilisation of passive infrastructure and help drive the proliferation of affordable mobile services across Africa.''

Eaton Towers was advised by Moelis & Co.

Shares of the company gained Rs 4.85, or 1.21%, to trade at Rs 405.40. The total volume of shares traded was 281,325 at the BSE (10.44 a.m., Monday).