Sharing Base Stations: Is it Possible ?

October 30, 2006 – 6:17 pm

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Can mobile phone service providers share base stations? Of course, not. However, according to a mobile phone expert, sharing base station is the only way to sustain growth in the mobile phone industry in Africa. At this moment, Africa is one of the fastest expanding places in the world in terms of mobile phone growth. Well, this growth is going to reduce drastically within 3-4 years. Vast majority of people in rural Africa are yet to have access to mobile phone service. Most mobile phone operators do not want to expand their network in the rural areas because of 3 factors.

In the rural areas not too many people can afford to subscribe a mobile phone service.
In the rural areas, density of population is lower than urban areas.
In the rural areas, setting up of base stations is expensive.

Celtel International B.V. chief executive officer Marten Pieters feels that the only way mobile phone companies can expand their services is to share base stations and masts. People’s Daily Online reported:

Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets and operators are expected to enjoy a bumper 40 percent jump in subscriber numbers this year.

But analysts say this is expected to slow to between 4 and 5 percent in 2011.

Should this happen, analysts fear that service delivery in rural and economically depressed areas of the continent would be impacted, which means large swaths of Africa, where many live on less than one U.S. dollar a day, would fall behind.

“To reach these (poor) areas we will need to change the model,” Pieters said, adding that sharing costs made sense for operators seeking to reach poor areas where returns on investment were slim.

This is surely a revolutionary idea. I wish that major mobile phone service providers in Africa and other parts of the world should seriously contemplate on this model. This can become a win-win situation for both the mobile phone operators and the consumers.

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