Vodafone Australia sells towers

in brief Mobile carrier Vodafone Australia today said it had sold 140 of its mobile phone towers to infrastructure management firm Crown Castle Australia.

The carrier's chief technology officer Andy Reeves said Vodafone had sold the assets because it was "commercially prudent" for the carrier to outsource its ownership and management.

"Vodafone will continue to utilise each transmission site under a leasing agreement with Crown Castle and use the proceeds to the sale to reinvest in its national mobile broadband network upgrade," he said in a statement.

Vodafone has previously sold towers to Crown Castle: in 2001 the firm sold approximately 669 towers to the group for US$130 million. Crown Castle has also bought towers from Optus and owns approximately 1,600 sites in Australia in total, with 200 purchased over the last 18 months.