Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC) has granted Pan African Towers license to
provide infrastructure sharing and collocation services in the country.
The license
is valid for 10 years, but can be revoked if the company fails to roll out
services in the next year. Pan African Towers is also obliged to pay an annual
operating fee.
Following
the NCC’s approval, Pan African Towers confirmed plans to target at least 10
African countries including Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia, Guinea
and Senegal.
The company
is currently negotiating to acquire about 850 towers in Nigeria from local
tower companies and plans to add 1,500 strategically located build-to-suite
sites by 2019.
It will
charge lease rates on all new build-to-suite sites across Africa at the local
currency instead of dollars to address the foreign exchange challenge.
This issue
has impacted negatively on the ICT and telecoms sector in Nigeria and said to
be one of the main reasons behind the debt crisis at Etisalat Nigeria.
Sohail
Haider, director, Pan African Towers, described the NCC’s approval as a welcome
development that would meet the growing demand for more competition.
“PAT is well
positioned to achieve that goal. According to recent reports from NCC, Nigeria
needs about 80,000 base stations to achieve the smart Nigeria initiative, using
4G/5G technology, but currently has much less than 50,000 base stations,” said
Haider.
Prof. Umoru
Garba Danbatta, executive vice chairman of the NCC, said while more players are
needed to offer collocation services in the country’s telecommunications sector
to ensure healthy competition, the high cost of setting up and running the
sites had made the sector to be attractive only to few companies, led by IHS
Towers and HTN Towers.
Danbatta
said with the telecoms sector embracing collocation, it would become easier for
the sector to improve quality of services, increase operational efficiency and
boost customer experience.
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