http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1b55749c ... z2qP0F7R71
Intelligent Energy, a spin-out from Loughborough University, on Tuesday signed a deal with Ascend Telecom, a private-equity backed Indian network services company, to install its hydrogen fuel cell power units at 4,000 mobile telecom towers across 26 states.India has 425,000 mobile telecom towers, compared with the 23,000 built in the UK. In India, though, few towers have uninterrupted grid connections – with 70 per cent suffering from power cuts of up to eight hours a day. Typically, diesel generators are used to provide back-up power during these blackouts, but running them accounts for up to 25 per cent of the total network operating costs – reducing profitability for the mobile tower operators.
.Ascend Telecom is one of the smaller and newer of India’s telecoms infrastructure companies and is backed by New Silk Route, an Indian private equity firm with $1.4bn under management.But Intelligent Energy also plans to offer its fuel cell technology to other companies in the Indian telecoms infrastructure market, which is valued at around $2.8bn a year, as well as other developing markets where mobile telephony is rapidly expanding.