Infrastructure sharing among telecom companies generally involves two or more service providers who come together to share various parts of their network infrastructure for the purpose of service delivery. Nowadays, allowing telecom service providers to use the passive infrastructure on a shared basis is popular where passive infrastructure consists of non-core elements/equipment used in the telecommunication system.

It allows service providers to jointly use masts, buildings and even antennae, thus avoiding unnecessary duplication of infrastructure while saving costs. Infrastructure sharing generally refers to the sharing of mobile towers for installing antennae to enable wireless service, sharing existing base station sites, air conditioners, power, optical fiber used as the backbone, radio links and other passive resources in order to avoid infrastructure duplication.

The Government of Nepal has issued Infrastructure Sharing Directive 2015 for telecom service providers. While issuing the directive, the government had taken note of the exponential growth in mobile subscribers in the country. It was presumed that mobile service providers would require a large number of towers to sustain the growth pattern, which obviously would require a huge expenditure and time to roll out their services.

Therefore, passive infrastructure sharing amongst mobile service providers was assumed crucial as it would allow more than one service provider to control and use a common infrastructure. The directive was aimed at starting infrastructure sharing immediately to reduce the mushroom growth of towers and prevent excessive outflow of foreign currency due to duplication of investment in passive infrastructures.

Nepal Telecom and Ncell currently operate more than 7,700 and 4,200 BTS tower sites respectively throughout the country. A recent analysis reveals that the capital cost for building new infrastructure accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the rollout cost of a telecom service. Unfortunately, nine years have passed, but infrastructure sharing among telecom service providers has not taken place. It is common to find similar poles and towers belonging to different operators in the same locality. It is equally common to find different telecom operators digging up roads in cities and along highways, each laying infrastructure similar to that of the other.

Infrastructure Sharing Directive 2015 makes compulsory sharing of towers above 7 meters in height by two or more telecom service providers wherever possible. Majority of the towers built by telecom service providers are of up to 7 meters, which have no mandatory sharing obligation, and the towers which are above 7 meters have also been designed and installed by the telecom service providers in the way that sharing is hardly possible as those towers were erected only for their own purpose. Therefore, a tower, which is a major passive infrastructure, has not been shared in the spirit of the mandatory directive.

Similarly, a parallel optical fiber backbone has been laid down by telecom service providers, and therefore, the backbone sharing has also not been felt necessary by the operators. This has resulted in the duplication of infrastructure with substantial additional cost for equipment, which has given rise to excessive repatriation of foreign currency to procure the equipment. Nepal Telecommunications Authority also has not paid attention to implementing the directive strictly.

The increasing call and data traffic, coupled with limited bandwidth and a shortage of cell towers, has resulted in poor network coverage by telecom operators. One way to solve this problem would be to set up more towers.

The ground is also ready for the introduction of 5G wireless services in Nepal. The ultra-high-speed data generated by 5G networks will facilitate the delivery of a wide range of multimedia services, including video telephony, ultra-high-capacity television and radio frequency-based wireless technology for fixed broadband access, eliminating the need for traditional cables through Fixed Wireless Access. Additionally, 5G will support the creation of private networks that operate independently of public infrastructure, connecting a predetermined number of devices within a completely segregated environment.

To maximise benefits, 5G services should be cost-effective, which also demands infrastructure sharing. 5G service needs closer BTS sites than 4G as it mostly runs on lower latency. Thus, 5G service will be more expensive if the operators keep building BTS sites on their own without sharing the sites with each other.

The profitability of telecom service providers has been decreasing every year due to the voluminous cost of infrastructure and use of Over-the-Top (OTT) platform for voice service. Therefore, infrastructure sharing would be a major cost saving tool for the operators to survive in the long run.

To address the problem of uneven infrastructure development in the telecom sector, NTA should think of building robust infrastructure by establishing a separate infrastructure company. The infrastructure company would be responsible for building the required infrastructure for telecom service providers under the infrastructure sharing mechanism throughout the country, which would help avoid duplication in investment. Additionally, by centralising infrastructure development, it will expediate the deployment process and prevent the cluttering of the skyline with unnecessary towers and equipment.

Acharya is a telecom expert and former managing director of Nepal Telecom