Business Desk :
Robi Axiata Limited, the country’s second-largest mobile phone operator, has decided to sell off all its remaining network towers to one of the four existing management companies.
According to the industry insiders, discussions with relevant parties have seen significant progress in this regard.
A deal may be inked anytime soon, they, while seeking anonymity, told this correspondent.
Robi currently owns a total of 2,470 towers.
Back in 2015, the operator had sold as many as 5,258 towers to edotco Bangladesh Co. Ltd for $250 million.
Another big player of the telecom industry, Banglalink, is considering going down the same path and selling off some 8,000 towers that they currently own in a bid to focus more on their core businesses.
Experts believe that once done, this move will open up tower-sharing opportunities among the telecom operators of the country.
This will also help to reduce maintenance costs and create a one-off revenue opportunity for them, the experts added.
Refusing to comment directly on this matter, Shahed Alam, chief corporate and regulatory officer for Robi, said, “Given the state of the maturity of the telecom sector, tower sharing among the operators is the best solution to optimize an operator’s investment.
“With greater efficiency in tower management, we can easily bring down the number of towers in the country as per the tower sharing policy.
Robi has long been taking a lead in this regard in the industry. We are very much ready and willing to scale up tower sharing to power our digital vision.”
In 2007, with the aim to increase tower infrastructure sharing among the mobile network operators (MNOs), Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), introduced a policy for tower sharing.
The policy intended to reduce the number of additional towers, ensure optimized use of scarce land resources and reduce pressure on power demand.
Addressing the reluctance of the MNOs in this regard, the country’s telecom regulatory body went on to issue licenses to four companies to manage and operate all the mobile towers.
A mere 4,148 or 16% of all the mobile towers in the country are currently being shared among the operators.
Robi is leading the way in the industry by sharing 30% of its existing towers with other companies.
Meanwhile, Grameenphone (GP) and Banglalink share only 17%-19% of their towers with other MNOs.
Of the total 36,866 existing mobile towers in the country, mobile companies own 24,425 of them.
MNOs had been managing towers since 1997.
To put things into perspective, management company edotco, currently owns 8,500 towers, AB Hi Tech owns 250, and Summit owns 100 towers.
