MUMBAI -- The Board of GTL Infrastructure Ltd. (GTL INFRA) today in-principle approved a Rs. 50,000 crore (US$ 11 billion) transaction to create the world’s largest independent telecom infrastructure company, neither owned nor controlled by any telecom operator.

This transformational deal will be implemented through a merger of Reliance Infratel Limited (RINFRATEL) tower assets into GTL INFRA.

Together with the recent purchase of tower business of Aircel, the proposed merger of RINFRATEL’s tower business will create substantial scale and opportunities to improve tenancy for GTL INFRA.

Upon closure of the transaction, the merged entity will have over 80,000 towers and over 1,25,000 tenancies from over 10 telecom operators such as RCOM, Aircel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea, Vodafone , Bharti Airtel, MTS, Uninor Telecom, Videocon Mobile, Tata Tele-services and STel. In addition, the merged entity will have a firm option of additional 75,000 tenancies from leading players.

GTL Infrastructure Ltd.