To date, 99% of the Middle East’s towers sit in the hands of the region’s MNOs with very little infrastructure sharing happening between operators. TowerXchange take a look at why this has been the case and what is starting to change, examining key developments in the market in 2017.
Although the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has a number of multi-country operators (Etisalat, Zain, Ooredoo, STC) who have operations in markets where tower sharing is a common practice, they have been reluctant to share their infrastructure in their home markets.
It is believed that tower sharing had not become popular in the Middle-East since operators have enjoyed high liquidity and ARPU, and have relatively easy operations driven primarily by site accessibility and readily available grid power.
