Tanzania telecoms providers, Airtel Tanzania and Vodacom Tanzania have entered into agreements that will provide both with full access to towers from Helios Towers Africa (HTA).
In a partnership agreement that was entered last year between Vodacom and Helios Towers Africa, 1,149 existing telecoms towers were transferred from Vodacom to Helios Towers Tanzania (HTT).
Last week, a similar agreement was announced in which Bharti Airtel, a subsidiary of Airtel Tanzania, will divest approximately 3,100 telecoms towers from Airtel to HTA across four of the 17 African nations in which the company operates, thereby expanding HTA’s tower coverage in Africa to over 7,800 owned towers.
Commenting on the agreement, Chairman of Bharti Airtel International Netherlands BV (BAIN), Manoj Kohli, indicated that the partnership represents the growth of telecom services in the region.
“It is an important step towards the consolidation of tower assets across Africa that will drive industry-wide cost efficiencies through infrastructure sharing,” said Kohli, “The agreement will further help in accelerating the growth of telecom services in the Continent and at the same time benefit the environment by avoiding duplication of infrastructure.”
Helios Towers was founded in 2005 by Helios Investment Partners and currently claims to have the largest number of telecoms towers held by an independent company focused exclusively on Africa.