Mobiserve says tower sharing to boost Egypt telecoms growth

Mobiserve, which provides telecoms infrastructure and engineering services in the Middle East and Africa, predicts continued growth in the sector in Egypt as well as the Middle East.

Growth is expected to be driven by demand for data services and new technologies such as LTE and mobile payments.

In Egypt, despite the recent political events, the telecom sector remains robust and is one of Africa's most developed.

The country has more than 80 million subscribers, following year-on-year growth of 26 percent.

The latest figures estimate that Egypt is reaching 100 percent penetration.

Network investment in the next few years is expected to be substantial in order to support subscriber levels as well as projected growth in mobile broadband. As a result, operators are looking for ways to reduce costs while rolling out next generation networks and increasing profitability.

This includes tower sharing, and the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) granted a network tower sharing licence to Mobiserve Holding last November.

The financial benefits to telecom operators of tower sharing are expected to be significant. Building towers constitutes nearly 50 percent of total capital expenditure for Egyptian operators.

Network tower sharing enables operators to overcome this challenge by reducing duplication of the costliest elements of the network. Resulting savings can be from 20 percent to 50 percent of an operator's CAPEX and OPEX, said Sameh Atalla, CEO of Mobiserve.

EGYPT NEWS