Eaton Towers, a UK-based company that specialises in African cell tower management, has secured $150 million equity funding from Capital International Private Equity Funds (CIPEF), a private equity investor that focuses on emerging markets.
Eaton Towers will use the funds to acquire, build and develop telecom towers across Africa for existing and new projects.
Alan Harper, CEO, Eaton Towers, said that CIPEF’s backing will give it “further momentum” to become a major independent provider of shared cell towers across Africa.
“We expect to raise significant additional debt on the back of this new equity commitment,” Harper said.
“Tower sharing benefits everyone involved. Operators can increase coverage and quality of service whilst cutting capital investment and operating costs. At the same time, subscribers benefit from the increased competition of operators sharing the same tower which also improves coverage.”
In October 2010, Eaton Towers signed a 10-year contract to take over the operations and co-location management of 750 telecom towers for Vodafone Ghana and the company plans to expand its operations across other parts of Africa.
The new funding will enable Eaton Towers to buy additional tower portfolios from operators and build new towers on which it will sell co-location and shared-infrastructure to mobile operators.
According to a study by Delta Partners, a Dubai-based telecoms advisory and investment firm, there are some 200,000 towers in the Middle East and Africa. Delta Partners expects the number of towers in the Middle East and Africa to increase by 50% in the next five years, but estimates that $8 billion of cumulative CAPEX could be saved by tower sharing agreements.
Eaton Towers currently has more than 1,000 tower sites in Ghana and South Africa.
