The biggest deals in January

Deal of the month
In another deal in the telecom infrastructure, Tata Teleservices merged its telecom tower arm, Wireless Tata Telecom Infrastructure, with SREI Group company, Quippo Telecom Infrastructure. Quippo Telecom will pay $493.7 million (Rs 2,468 crore) to the Tata Group and transfer 5,000 towers to WTTI for a 49 per cent stake and management control in the partnership.

Impact analysis
The merged entity’s tower portfolio at 18,000 towers, makes it significantly higher than the capacity of its peers like Essar Telecom Tower & Infrastructure and GTL, and would assist the company in competing with the larger tower firms. For SREI, the deal ensures additional revenues as TTSL is set to launch GSM services by the end of 2009 in addition to expanding its CDMA network across India.