American Tower's focus on India, looking at China

Wireless tower firm American Tower Corp, which is spreading its wings in India, also sees opportunities in China as third-generation services drives demand for sharing of masts, its president of Asian operations said on Wednesday.

The company owns about 2,500 towers in India after buying local firms Xcel Telecom and Transcend this year, and Amit Sharma said they could nearly triple that in the next 18 months.

"Organically, I would certainly like to have 6,000-7,000 towers over a 12-18 months period. Acquisitions, we will see."

Sources have told Reuters American Tower is one of the four suitors for Indian cellular firm Aircel's 12,000 towers, but Sharma would not comment on that.

Sharma told Reuters in an interview the firm's top priority was India, the only country in the region where it owned towers, although countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Indonesia looked pretty attractive.

"We are in exploratory discussions in various other countries," Sharma said, adding the firm was interested in China but had no firm plans there yet

"We have looked at one or two small opportunities. I would not make that into anything big, I would not overstate that at this point," Sharma said of their interest in China. "Just look-see type stuff."

China recently rolled out of 3G mobile services, which allow for easy Web surfing over mobile phones. Such high-speed data services need bigger and deeper infrastructure, which should raise demand for mobile towers.

American Tower, which competes with Crown Castle in the United States, is betting on Asia as growth in its home market is slowing. American Tower owns about 30,000 towers in the United States and Latin American countries.

"The US market is not growing as fast as it was. High single-digit, 10 percent is the kind of growth we can expect. Markets like Asia, there is still considerable room to grow."

India, which offers some of the cheapest call charges in the world, is a lucrative market for a tower firm as low prices put pressure on operator margins and on their network capex, leading to more tower sharing and leasing to save costs.

India will auction radio waves for 3G and WiMax services in January and networks are expected to be rolled out in 2010.

"In 6-12 months, launch of 3G and WiMax will inevitably create further demand for towers, because in India spectrum given to the operators is very limited," Sharma said.