Mobile tower building deadlock ends
BI Special || BusinessInsider
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The stagnancy over building new towers for mobile phone networks finally ended after two years as the mobile phone operators and tower building companies have come to an agreement about the modes of operations.
Last week, in a meeting with the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the tower companies informed the commission that construction of new towers will begin soon as they have signed an agreement with the mobile phone operators, said BTRC officials.
In November 2018, BTRC issued licences to four firms to build and operate mobile phone towers, aimed at separating the network business from mobile phone operators.
The move stalled building around 3,000 new towers in the last two years as mobile phone operators and tower building companies could not agree upon the transition of tower ownership and modes of operations.
Edotco Bangladesh, Summit Towers, Kirtonkhola Tower, and AB High Tech Consortium are the tower firms responsible for building, maintaining, and renting out the towers to mobile operators.
BTRC officials said Summit signed an agreement with Banglalink and AB Hightech inked a deal with mobile operator Robi.
Kirtonkhola is still in talks and might soon finalise a deal, said a senior BTRC official.
"We hope that with the development, the quality of service for mobile phone users will improve. It was a long-standing issue and we are happy it has finally been resolved,” BTRC Chairman Md Jahirul Haque told the Business Insider on Wednesday.
He said the commission will monitor the progress of the new tower building.
The total number of mobile phone subscribers was 157.5 million in January 2019, which increased to 167.1 million by the end of September this year.
Although the number of mobile phone users increased by 10 million within this period, no towers were built because of the stand-off between telecom companies and tower companies, said BTRC officials.
They also said it was one of the key reasons for the decrease in service quality of mobile phone operators.
