Telecom firms in infrastructure agreement

Martin Kadzere : Senior Business Reporter

STATE owned telecommunication firms have mutually agreed on terms of sharing infrastructure to mitigate duplication of investment. Deputy Minister of Information, Communication and Technology and Courier Services Dr Win Mlambo said despite disagreements, most of the companies have finally agreed. The agreement is in line with the Government’s philosophy of promoting the sharing of passive infrastructure such as towers to enhance operational efficiencies and reduce costs.

A working group represented by officials from the telecommunication companies was now in the process of formulating a legislative framework on infrastructure sharing.

In March this year, Government and state owned telecommunication firms met to discuss how they could share infrastructure to eliminate duplication of investments.

“The discussion we had was to solicit cooperation among all state enterprises so that we are together on board; they understood what we want to do and they agreed,” said Dr Mlambo.

It is likely Government would establish a new entity or an existing firm to manage infrastructure.

“It is a process,” he said. “Once we have the legislation in place, we may create a new company, which is then going to handle the issue of infrastructure sharing or we can use any of the existing companies to handle the job (of managing passive infrastructure.)

“We will then invite all parastatals and any other (private company . . . to hang up their intelligence infrastructure on the passive infrastructure. During the meeting in March, minister Supa Mandiwanzira said there was a huge scope of saving forex through infrastructure sharing.

“This country is short of hard currency,” said the minister. “As much as possible we must save hard currency and not import things that are already in this country.

“We have cases of the operators having three towers on top of the mountain. They will have three generators (and) each company will have to create a road going up there.

“Very often, each one of them sends a truck with diesel to refill the generator. And yet one tower can be designed to look after three networks or even more.

“Therefore we reduce that cost of importing steel used to build towers; we reduce the cost of importing diesel. So the cost savings from a country perspective are also huge.”

Minister Mandiwanzira said the state owned telecomm firms should take the lead in embracing the concept. He noted in some cases, Government was wasting on duplicated investments.

“We discovered that the infrastructure that Tel One intended to build under its $98 million facility is infrastructure that Net One has already built under its $218 million facility,” he said.