Wednesday January 7, 02:24 AM

Source: Indian Express Finance

Why's cell tower business booming?

By The Financial Express
On surpassing the 600m subscribers mark by mid-2008, China became the world s largest mobile market. At the time, India had some 296m subscribers. But, adding multiple new subscribers every second, this base grew to 336m by November. The country s capital became the first Indian city to have over 100% telecom penetration, putting it in the same league as London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. But a fifth of Delhi s population still doesn t have a mobile connection and countrywide penetration still hovers around 30%. Along with strong growth forecasts, this suggests a strong upcoming demand for cellular infrastructure, which is what the merger of Tata Teleservices tower company with the tower firm Quippo will tap. The merged enterprise proposes to grow from 18,000 to over 50,000 towers by 2012. This would supply a significant part of the 3.8 lakh towers that India will need by 2010. As for the government, besides proposing to install 8,000 towers in rural areas in the current financial year, it is looking at another 11,000 in the next fiscal. China Mobile, the world s largest cellular service provider by subscriber base, which built its early success on mainland cities where it seems that everyone who can afford the service already has it now, has also been plunging ever deeper into the interior, building towers from the deserts of Inner Mongolia to the mountains of Tibet. On the mountainous front, its most newsworthy achievement last year was putting a tower atop Mount Everest, so that people could make calls about the Olympic torch relay when it went through the area. But perhaps the reward for the quirkiest tower story goes to the McCains, with Cindy using her clout to get both Verizon and ATandT to plonk down one each right there on her property.