Industry Updates

'SAMENA Daily' - News

New companies to manage towers of mobile operators

The telecom regulator has decided to allow new companies to build and manage towers of mobile operators in a bid to contain spread of such infrastructure.

As operators will share each other's infrastructure under the new arrangement, their expenditure as well as power consumption will come down.

The regulator will provide the tower companies with licences and a licensing guideline will be prepared, said Sarwar Alam, secretary and spokesperson of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

The licensing will begin once the telecom ministry gives a go-ahead to the guideline, he said, adding: "The existing infrastructure guideline will also be amended."

As mobile operators now set up towers separately, the number of such structures is high and will go up further in future, resulting in a rise in radio-frequency radiation emitted by antennas, according to a BTRC report.

The bigger the number of the towers, the higher is electricity and land consumption that leads to increased investment and operational expenditure, it said.

Six mobile operators have 26,446 towers -- Grameenphone has 8,845, Banglalink 5,120, Robi 6,592, Airtel 3,734, Teletalk 1,275 and Citycell 880, according to the report. However, Banglalink and Airtel said the number of their towers is higher than the BTRC figures.

Dhaka alone has 9,552 towers, while the rest are spread across the country.

The BTRC said developed countries encourage their operators to share common towers rather than setting up them separately.

Currently Bangladeshi operators, under infrastructure-sharing agreements between them, can share their passive infrastructure that includes non-telecom equipment such as towers, buildings, batteries, electricity, and cooling systems.

But operators in developed countries can share their base stations and switches with each other.

Earlier in February, mobile operator Robi had sought an approval to transfer 80 percent of its network infrastructure assets to Edotco Group, a fully owned subsidiary of Malaysian Axiata Group that manages telecom towers.

But the telecom regulator had approved transferring 49 percent of Robi's network infrastructure shares to Edotco, both of which are subsidiaries of Axiata.

Airtel Bangladesh has also formed a tower infrastructure company.

A Reuters report last month said Bharti Airtel Ltd would sell more than 4,800 mobile phone masts in Nigeria to American Tower Corp for $1.05 billion.



Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/new-companies-to-manage-towers-of-mobile-operators-56468

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