Summit Communications chief calls for tough govt actions for common network

Md Jamal Uddin A top telecom executive has demanded a "tough" government move to enforce infrastructure sharing among the country's mobile, fixed phone and wireless operators, saying swift actions are needed to curb "wasted" investment in the sector. Arif Al Islam, who heads Summit Communications Limited, said this week multinational and local firms have poured up to US$5 billions in building telecommunications backbone nationwide, but a quarter of this investment could have been avoided if they shared the network. The country's telecommunications regulator prepared a guideline for infrastructure sharing among the mobile operators, but the policy was never put into effect, leading to duplication and unnecessary spending in the sector. "We need tough government decision to enforce mandatory use of common network among the telecom operators. Both wireless and wired operators should be allowed to get open access to base stations and fibre optic cables," he said. "Many nations across the globe have implemented such policies sternly to prevent duplication," Mr. Arif who was also the deputy chief executive officer of Grameenphone said. Arif Al Islam, also the managing Director and a shareholder of SCL, told the FE that each of the nation's top mobile phone operators had laid thousands of miles of fibre-optic cables to boost their services across the country. "Instead of one or two-fold lines, we have now seven-eight fold lines along the Dhaka-Chittagong route. One or two operators could have laid the cables and then allowed all others to share the network," he said. "It's a sheer waste of money. Similarly thousands of base station towers have been established all over the country by the operators. Even these days, 100 new base stations have been set up by a mobile phone operator and Wimax operators every month," he added. Mr. Arif joined the SCL last year after drawing the curtain on his decade-long career at the Grameenphone, the country's largest mobile phone operator. In two years, he has transformed SCL as one of the fastest telecom infrastructure backbone firm. As one of the country's two NTTN (Nationwide Telecommunication Transmission Network) licensee, the SCL has laid fibre optic cables in all of the country's major cities in Continued to page 20