Telecom operator Aircel is in talks with three potential buyers to sell its 17,000 telecom towers. Chief operating officer of Aircel, Gurdeep Singh said the company plans to conclude the deal in a month or two.

“We are in the final stages of negotiation with the three potential buyers to sell the towers. We have not yet reached at the conclusion but are likely to finalise it,” Singh said.

However, Singh declined to reveal the names of the companies. Of the total 38,000 towers, Aircel owns around 17,000 towers. According to industry insiders, Tata Quippo and GTL Infrastructure are the two main players in the fray.

Malaysia’s mobile operator Maxis Communications holds 74 per cent in Aircel.

In a related development, service provider Aircel entered into a partnership with Infosys Technologies to launch the first mobile application store in the country, offering subscribers to browse and download applications.

This is one of the first initiative by a telecom company in the country. Infosys is offering the platform ‘FLYPP’. Chief operating officer, Infosys SD Shibulal said the IT firm is also in talks with other global and domestic service providers for the mobile application platform.

“The service will allow users greater choice for applications related to health, finance, entertainment and lot of other applications. It will be not device-centric and most of the applications will be free of cost. However, we will have some premium products,” Singh said.

Pioneered by Apple for its iPhone users, a number of mobile handset players, including Sony Ericsson and Nokia, have launched the application store.