INTERVIEW - American Tower's focus on India, looking at China

By Devidutta Tripathy

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Wireless tower firm American Tower Corp, which is spreading its wings in India, also sees opportunities in China as third-generation services drives demand for sharing of masts, its president of Asian operations said on Wednesday.

The company owns about 2,500 towers in India after buying local firms Xcel Telecom and Transcend this year, and Amit Sharma said they could nearly triple that in the next 18 months.

"Organically, I would certainly like to have 6,000-7,000 towers over a 12-18 months period. Acquisitions, we will see."

Sources have told Reuters American Tower is one of the four suitors for Indian cellular firm Aircel's 12,000 towers, but Sharma would not comment on that.

Sharma told Reuters in an interview the firm's top priority was India, the only country in the region where it owned towers, although countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Indonesia looked pretty attractive.

"We are in exploratory discussions in various other countries," Sharma said, adding the firm was interested in China but had no firm plans there yet

"We have looked at one or two small opportunities. I would not make that into anything big, I would not overstate that at this point," Sharma said of their interest in China.

"Just look-see type stuff."