Pan African Towers Targets 2000 Towers in 2018
Pan African Towers (PAT) a new player in the telecommunication infrastructure sharing industry, which recently got approval from the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) for collocation and infrastructure sharing services, presented its pan African vision at the Tower Xchange “Meet up Africa and Middle East 2017” in Johannesburg, South Africa. At the meeting, it promised to hit its target of erecting 2000 towers in areas where it has presence in Nigeria and other African countries by 2018. PAT, which prides itself as innovative player in the market has concluded arrangements to grow its initial tower portfolio from an existing 850 towers to 2000 towers within the next 12 months across the West African sub-continent, with most of the discussions at advanced stages.
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, several telecom towers are still being managed in-house by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Pan African Towers (PAT) has mapped out a strategic growth plan to acquire and manage to lease over 2000 towers in the next twelve months in Nigeria and three other African countries. The growth plan will see PAT becoming a major player among independent towers companies and equally make it the fastest growing – a feat that took many TowerCos years to attain, with many MNOs already looking in the way of tower divestment and infrastructure sharing.
PAT has positioned itself to strategically take advantage of the infrastructure gap in the African tower industry. Industry experts have revealed that only a quarter of the tower sites in the African market is being managed by independent tower companies. MNOs and other ISPs alone do not have the capacity for the multi-billion-dollar investment outlay that is required for providing this infrastructure, as well as the attendant efficiency, this provides for investors an investible market in the African tower market and recent tower deals have proved that independent tower companies do a better job of managing towers than the MNOs from which they were acquired.
The new tower company in its plan to strategically break into the African tower market scene is looking in the way of strategic relationships, which will help operators boost their revenues by meeting an ever-increasing demand for quality services and at the same time eliminate the huge costs of building new towers.