Aircel mulling buying back towers

Malaysian-backed cellco Aircel is considering buying back towers it sold to GTL Infrastructure in 2010, the Economic Times cites two people familiar with the situation as saying. The operator has reportedly received loans of more than INR60 billion (USD992.7 million) over the last eight months and is considering purchasing the infrastructure instead of paying penalties to GTL for failing to meet the terms of the original sale agreement, under which it committed to taking up 20,000 slot tenancies on the towers. Aircel had halted expansion shortly after the sale, as investigations into potential wrongdoing in the allocation of spectrum and a price war led the provider to be more conservative in its operations. GTL may yet throw a spanner in the works, however, with one of the sources claiming that GTL would not be willing to sell the 17,000 former Aircel towers alone and would also want to dispose of its other 15,000 towers as well.