The nation's telecom regulator has approved the guidelines for tower sharing licences, which will pave the way for third party to develop and control mobile-network infrastructure, an official said.
The guidelines, approved in a recent meeting of the Bangladesh Telecommunica-tion Regulatory Commission (BTRC), will allow no more than two companies to take control of mobile-network maintenance and rollout across the country.
The award will be done through auction.
If awarded the job, this will take away the control of thousands of mobile towers across the country from cellphone companies.
"We've approved the tower sharing guidelines to ensure optimum use of network infrastructure and reduce radiation," the commission secretary Md. Sarwar Alam said.
He said that the commission will send the guidelines to the ministry of posts, telecommunications and information technology soon for its approval.
Mr Alam said the commission devised the guidelines after analysing the country's existing mobile-network situation, infrastructure sharing model of neighbouring countries and other related aspects.
He said the telecom regulator will consider network roll-out as one of the major aspects of according the tower sharing licence.
According to the guidelines, Tk 30 million has been fixed as base price for tower sharing auction, while Tk 15 million fixed as the licence renewal fee.
The guidelines say the wining companies must roll out the mobile network at the union level as per the agreement within five years, step by step.
It says the operators must take all the network related services from the licenced companies.
The tower development companies will be responsible for the establishment of 10 per cent new towers and 80 per cent of towers will need to be acquired from the operators' existing network.
Besides, the companies must go for operation within six months after getting the licence from the regulator. It says tower sharing will help create a competitive market environment for the country's mobile operators.
Sharing will save a sizable amount of agricultural and other useful lands from tower related use.
The commission meeting in its observation said despite having considerable scope for network sharing under the passive infrastructure sharing guidelines in the country, the operators did not avail opportunity.
Statistic available with the BTRC, out of 26,400 towers across the country, only 15-16 per cent of the network are being shared among mobile-operators and the regulator termed it 'very poor'.
The regulator, in its observation, also said this poor network sharing scenario in the country existed because there was no obligation to do this.
The BTRC official said currently the operators mostly have their own towers to support their customers.
He said over 60 per cent towers required for the next 10 years in Bangladesh have already been developed.
When contacted, leading telecom operator Grameenphone said the regulator has already been in consultation with the industry on the guidelines.
"However, we've neither heard nor been communicated on any official directive in this regard," said Sayed Talat Kamal, head of external communications of the company.
He said he cannot comment on the issue any further
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