Mobile Infrastructure Sharing in Bangladesh: Bottlenecks and Way Forward

Mobile infrastructures sharing are principally two types: passive and active. Passive infrastructures are the non-electronic infrastructure e.g. site, tower etc and are the most common form of sharing where benefits are easily understood. Active sharing e.g. Radio Access Network (RAN) consumes lion's share of capital expenditures and is gaining increased acknowledgment. In Bangladesh, informal sharing started in 2003 followed by formal policy introduction in 2008 by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC). However, the sharing is permitted for passive infrastructures only, and less than 18% of total passive resources are shared by the operators, keeping the larger portion still untapped. Given the appropriate environment, sharing benefit can be increased many folds both for the operators and consumers. While the operators face strategic and operational difficulties in sharing the resources, the regulator faces the challenge of ensuring a level playing ground for all the operators. To address the problem, existing policies should be reviewed by the regulators and the industries are to critically analyze different dimensions of infrastructures sharing for extracting the maximum benefit in the consistently changing technological environment.