The towerco community returned to Dubai for the 2024 edition of TowerXchange Meetup MENA (Middle East, North Africa) last Wednesday and Thursday. With over 230 towercos, MNOs, investors, regulators and solution providers in attendance, the event was billed as the biggest TowerXchange Meetup the region had ever seen.
A key topic at the conference was that strategy, not financing, is driving change in the MENA region with mobile operators creating their own version of towercos. How Zain and Ooredoo’s New TASC is enabling the operators to create value without a big capital raise was discussed while a strong financial position of gulf operators means that the towerco model is evolving to serve their needs.
Saudi towerco LATIS reported demand far outstripping projections. Instead of building 200-300 sites in 2023, they added 470 sites. In 2024, they said they might double that. TAWAL, another regional towerco, says it has been building for new customers and working hand-in-hand with megaprojects in the Kingdom as they find the towerco model uniquely suits the demands of Saudi Arabia’s huge new developments.
Several sessions focused on how Saudi Arabia is seeing 5G penetration of 80 percent of sites. It was reported that some markets, like Iraq, have towercos that are struggling with the challenge of maintaining reliable power. One session concluded that the region stays the most diverse in the world in terms of operational requirements.
Hearing from Analysys Mason, TASC Towers, TAWAL, Helios Towers and Vodafone Oman on the in-building panel, attendees learned there is an emerging realization from MNOs that the tower model is maturing, and they don’t want to prioritize their CAPEX on indoor projects, but the region lacks a clear regulatory and commercial framework to support the deployment of IBS.
Day two kicked off with three presentations from Delmec, the Small Cell Forum and TAWAL covering the commercial and operating models for smart deployments. Focus was on how smart cities and “megaprojects” require new types of infrastructure deployment, designed to facilitate high-capacity, low-latency 5G and eventually 6G networks. MNOs, towercos and “megaproject” developers, the panel concluded, need to create a standardized model for deploying these networks, with towercos as the network experts.
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