Mobile phone tower company e.co has been declared SMP (Significant Market Power) due to its unusually high number of towers, revenue and market control. According to the restrictions imposed by the regulatory body Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), if a mobile operator builds 100 towers in a quarter, it can entrust the construction of 25 towers to e.co. As a result, all mobile phone operators will have 75% of their sales, leases or rollbacks in a quarter for the three tower companies. Those three tower companies can take as many towers as they want through competition.
The restrictions are said to be market balancing as e.co holds over 86% of the tower business and 98% market share in terms of revenue.
With the declaration of e.co a CMP, there are four mobile operators—Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink and Teletalk—that will now have to give business to Summit Towers Limited, Kirtankhola Tower Bangladesh Limited and AB Hitech Consortium Limited. Once upon a time these operators themselves installed towers to operate the mobile network. In November 2018, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) issued licenses to four tower companies.
It is noteworthy that, the total number of towers of the country’s tower companies is 16 thousand 263. Out of this, the number of towers owned by e.co is 14 thousand 121, of which 78 are in progress and have work orders, but the number of towers that have not started is 434.
On the other hand, among the remaining three tower companies, Summit has 1,336 towers. Among them, 1 thousand 3 towers are complete, 257 are under construction and 76 towers have work orders but have not started. Kirtankhola has 412. Among them, 314 towers are complete, 77 are in progress and 21 towers have work orders but have not yet started. Abhitech has 394 towers. Among them, 210 towers are complete and 184 towers are under construction.
A Malaysian-based multinational company, e.co has operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines, Myanmar and Laos. Its parent company is Malaysia Axiata Berhad. Axiata also owns majority shares of Bangladeshi mobile operator Robi.