Will it join telco trend to puts its masts in the past?
Qatar-based mobile network operator group Ooredoo is considering a telecom tower sale, according to a report by Reuters, which says the multi-national telco is looking to sell passive infrastructure across its network, which includes masts, both inside Qatar and its other Middle Eastern territories.
The telco recently announced plans to sell off its Myanmar division for $576 million and a tower sale may be part of a strategy to restructure its assets and fund an expansion of the software wide of the business. Ooredoo said the Myanmar sale is part of its ‘strategic decisions to focus on markets where Ooredoo is leading’. Discussions are still in progress and there’s no certainty that Ooredoo will decide on a sale, according to the sources known to Reuters’ experts Hadeel Al Sayegh and Andrew Mills.
Telecom towers have been the target of several big takeovers in the past few years as telecom companies seek to reduce their debts and fund modernisation. Deutsche Telekom is looking for €18 billion for its tower business to pay off debt and fund its 5G investments. Vodafone has sold its tower businesses in New Zealand for $1.7 billion and at one stage it was hoping to raise €14 billion from the sale of its tower company Vantage Towers.
In the Gulf region, carriers have also been divesting from tower assets in their network to strategic investors in a bid to reduce heavy costs on infrastructure and focus on information and communications technology. Omantel in 2022 sold 2,890 towers in the country to Helios Towers for $575 million. The Saudi Telecom Company (STC) in 2019 spun out its more than 15,000 towers into a new subsidiary, Tawal. Kuwait-based Zain sold 1620 telecom towers to IHS Holding for $130 million in 2020.