There are three types of players in India seeking to address the emerging opportunity in the provision of towers.   

-stand alone tower companies

- telecom operators who have hived off their  the tower business into separate entities

- foreign entrants

Stand alone tower companies

Quipo Telecom Infrastructure Ltd  has  been sponsored by SREI, one of the leading non-banking financial institutions in India. It started its operations in early 2002. Having identified India''''s infrastructure sector as its principal growth area, SREI has built a unique business model, which revolves around the financing of infrastructure, construction and mining equipment, infrastructure project finance and renewable energy systems.

Key stakeholders in Quipo include IDFC Private Equity, GIC Special Investment, FMO, SwedFund, L&T, Ingersoll Rand etc

Quipo currently has 600 projects on air. Quipo has signed anchor agreements with  Bharti Airtel , Idea, Spice. Quipo is targeting 30,000 towers by 2011.

QTIL's offerings to its customers include a comprehensive site with all accessories to provide a smooth plug & play operation. As an Infrastructure service Provider (Holder of IP1 License) QTIL delivers complete telecom sites - plug & play - as per agreed contract terms & conditions. The responsibility includes site acquisition as per pre approved site coordinates, site development including civil work, equipment sourcing, erection & testing, final acceptance test and handing over, including: Acquisition  of suitable cell sites with an approx plot size of 60 ft X 50 ft, with complete due-diligence, documents etc. QTIL will offer ground based and roof top towers as per the requirement of the customers. QTIL obtains all necessary statutory permissions (except SACFA) for smooth rollout and operations. Along with tower, QTIL provides complete accessories, suitable for shared telecom infrastructure. These accessories include, shelter, DG, ACPDB, DC Power System, Battery Backup, Electrical System, Alarm System, Air Conditioning etc. QTIL will provide complete O & M services for the passive infrastructure of the sites. This includes preventive maintenance of towers, predictive & preventive maintenance of DG, AC, Battery, shelter, earthing and all other electrical items. QTIL will ensure uninterrupted service through its professionally managed O&M team.

GTL Infrastructure, a subsidiary of network services provider GTL, is focusing on this opportunity and would practice the model of sharing infrastructure amongst various telecom operators.

GTL is considered the largest independent telecom tower company in India. GTL Infrastructure has also already rolled out 1,200 cell-sites and plans to set up another 6,700 towers by March 2008 with an investment of Rs 2,030 crore.

GIL rolls out the entire passive infrastructure required in the needed territories and provisions it to multiple operators. GIL owns the passive assets and it does give the operators, a ‘ready to move in’ telecom equipment housing facility in the form of base station sites and network management/monitoring facilities. The operator pays a monthly/quarterly fee to GIL for utilising the facility.

Telecom Tower and Infrastructure Ltd is a subsidiary created by the Essar group, which holds around 33 per cent stake in mobile operator Vodafone -Essar , for constructing telecom towers that will be leased out to private operators. The company, with its IP1 licence, is into constructing "passive infrastructure" for telecommunications.

The company constructs everything, the tower, the shelter, the diesel generation sets, the rectifiers and other components. Telecom operators only have to get their vendors (such as Ericsson, Motorola) to put up the actual telecom equipment and microwave facility, Essar has so far focused on the southern states, Maharashtra and Mumbai. Many of them are for the circles of Hutch that were bought out from the BPL mobile group. It has completed over 600 such sites and is aiming at 7500 sites by 2008. Telecom Tower is also constructing sites for mobile operator IDEA Cellular.

TVS Interconnect Systems Ltd forms part of the TVS Group. TVSICS is a leading service provider of telecom infrastructure in India. Having developed experience in the field and with huge capital investments we are able to work with the leading cellular service providers in India. TVSICS being operational in many circles has plans to go pan India in the next one year with a massive plan for the telecom infrastructure.