In a bid to revive the flagging fortunes of BSNL, the government today approved hiving off the state-owned firm’s tower business into a new company as well as compensating it and MTNL Rs 627.20 crore for 800 MHz CDMA spectrum that they surrendered.
According to a source, the Union Cabinet has given ‘in principle’ approval for hiving off mobile tower assets of BSNL into a separate company, which will help the state-run firm to improve its financial position by unlocking the value of its mobile towers.
Consequent to the approval, the Department of Telecom can constitute an inter-ministerial group for working out the capital and organisational structure of the new company after market valuation of its tower assets, which will be considered by the Union Cabinet, the source said.
BSNL mobile tower assets consist of about 64,500 towers and more than 50,000 tower sites have optical fibre cable connectivity. The company expects valuation of its mobile tower company to be to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore.
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