America Movil’s shareholders have approved the company’s plan to spin off its mobile towers into a separate entity.
The Mexican operator on Friday announced that shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of the move, which will see it contribute certain assets – mainly its passive mobile infrastructure in its home market – to a new entity to be known as Telesites.
America Movil unveiled the plan in July, explaining that it intended to separate its mobile sites from mobile operator Telcel, in a bid to avoid new asymmetric regulation imposed by Ifetel.
It plans to list the new entity in Mexico.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Telesites will have 10,800 mobile towers. It will rent capacity to Telcel and to other mobile operators, putting it in direct competition with American Tower, which had 8,750 sites in Mexico at the end of last year.
American Tower already rents space on its mobile sites to Telefonica, which operates as Movistar in Mexico, and to AT&T’s new acquisitions Iusacell and Nextel, the newspaper noted.
The towers spin-off is one of a number of measures America Movil is undertaking in order to appease the regulator and to help it get approval to enter the TV space. It is also working on a plan to sell a portfolio of fixed and mobile assets to a new market entrant, but it has gone quiet on its progress in recent months.
