India’s telecom giant, Indus Towers, is leaping onto digitisation opportunties and smart city initiatives to cater to citizen-centric and surveillance services through its new invstement projects worth Rs. 200-300 crores, a company official said.
The telecom tower company jointly owned by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, and Idea Cellula has already rolled out this service in the New Delhi Municipal Authority (NDMA) areas.
“We have invested Rs 200 crore to Rs 300 crore for the NDMA project where we are linking electric poles for laying cables which can be used for lighting, Wi-Fi service, and surveillance activities. We can even monitor traffic using this,” said chief sales and marketing officer Sameer Sinha.
Regarding tower business, he said the company has invested Rs 33,000 crore till now and plans to invest Rs 6,000 crore more in the coming three years. “We have an installed capacity of 1,15,000 towers throughout the country and plans to add 5,000 more by the end of this year. Indus would like to increase its current tenancy rate from 2.19 to 3.5 as soon as possible,” Sinha said.
Indus Towers, which initiated its operations in 2007, has its presence in about 15 circles out of the 22, with a market share of 50 per cent in the tower rental business. The company’s revenues reached Rs. 5,428 crore during fiscal 2015 compared with Rs. 5,109 crore in the same period in the last fiscal, a growth of 6 percent. Its competitors in the space include Viom Networks and American Towers.
