MOBILE TOWER BUSINESS BTRC plans to auction 2 licences.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has decided to go for an open auction to award two licenses which will allow new independent companies to build and manage mobile network towers.BTRC officials said the regulator finalised a guideline at a regular meeting of the commission last week presided over by the BTRC chairman Sunil Kanti Bose.They also said the regulator is set to organise the auction by the end of this year.Currently, the mobile phone companies share mobile network towers of each others as per the rule.‘The guideline was finalised and after some minor changes it will be sent to the telecom ministry for approval,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.He said after the ministry approval the BTRC will start the auction process.‘The guidelines elaborated share structure, revenue sharing and other operating issues of the new network development companies,’ he added.Another BTRC official said the base price of the auction for new network tower company would range between Tk 3 crore and Tk 5 crore.‘The base price is yet to be finalised. After the new network companies come into operation the mobile phone operators will have to sell their existing towers to the new companies,’ he said.

He said the sell of network towers will depend on the requirements of the new companies.‘After a certain period of time the mobile phone operators will have no tower of their own,’ he said.The new companies, however, will not be able to enter into fibre network business.Currently, two individual companies — Fiber@Home Limited and Summit Communication — are NTTN licensees and are responsible formaintaining the fibre network of the mobile phone companies.The mobile phone operators and others have to rent or lease the infrastructure from the NTTN operators for network coverage.The BTRC in 2012 amended the Nationwide Telecommunication Transmission Network guidelines which allowed the mobile and WiMAX operators to enter into the network development business by forming subsidiaries.

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