Bharti to demerge tower business in Q3

New Delhi, Oct 31 (UNI) Country's leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd today said it expects to spin off its tower business in the current quarter and is open to selling a stake in the unit.

''The legal demerger should happen in this quarter. The company is already under an independent management team within Bharti. As soon as the legal demerger happens, I think the future plan in terms of financial partners or operating partners will be finalised,'' company's President and CEO Manoj Kohli told reporters here.

We are open to financial partners and/or operator partners, he added.

In July, Reliance Communications Ltd had sold five per cent of its tower business for Rs 1,400 crore and Bharti's tower unit was estimated to be worth about Rs 10 billion dollars according to analysts.

Mr Kohli said Bharti expects to reach an agreement in a month or two with state-run telecom provider BSNL on infrastructure sharing. ''We have already done pilots with BSNL and MTNL. We are positive about this and in a month or two we will reach a conclusion,'' Mr Kohli added.

UNI