Even in countries with developed telecoms markets there remain significant areas underserved by existing providers; Pakistan connections are growing at over 5% year-on-year but its penetration rate is still 76%. Despite this strong growth the country will never reach full penetration while large areas of the country lack coverage. AWAL Telecom took the unusual approach of making a speculative investment to fulfil latent demand in an underserved market. If towercos are going to help plug-in the least connected communities there are important lessons which can be taken from their experience. Since starting in 2015 AWAL has built a 45 tower portfolio of well-engineered, ready-to-share towers which are approaching a tenancy ratio of two.
Zero to hero: The Pakistani towerco ripping up the rule book
