DigitalBridge’s Highline secures BNDES loan to deploy 181 towers

Brazilian telecom tower company Highline, owned by US fund DigitalBridge, secured 65 million reais (US$11.8mn) in financing from Brazil’s development bank BNDES to deploy 4G and 5G towers.

The bulk of the funds will be used to install 145 towers in 124 favelas across the country, as well as in eight rural areas in the states of Bahia, Maranhão and Piauí, said BNDES in a release.

The remaining towers will go to 28 rural or urban territories.

In total, Highline will install 181 sites focusing mostly on poorly connected regions.

The resources come from the fund for the universalization of telecom services, FUST, which is managed and operated by BNDES.

Since October 2023, BNDES said it has approved 722mn reais for 11 FUST projects in 250 municipalities in 12 states. 

Founded in 2012, Highline has grown by acquiring several companies and towers, in addition to making its own deployments.

In 2020, the group bought Phoenix Tower's operations in Brazil, adding 2,500 sites.

That same year, Highline acquired 637 mobile towers from Oi for over 1 billion reais. Two years later, the company went shopping again and purchased 8,000 of Oi’s fixed-line towers, disbursing 1.7bn reais. It also bought towers from Algar Telecom, among others.

Highline now has around 13,500 sites deployed in Brazil, with long-term take-or-pay contracts with the main mobile operators in the market. 

It is the second largest towerco in the country after American Tower, which has an estimated 22,800 towers.