African mobile phone service providers urged to share base stations

Mobile phone service providers in Africa should consider sharing base stations to reduce costs, an industry insider has suggested.

Sharing base stations and even masts would help reduce costs for both the service providers and their clients, Celtel International B.V. chief executive officer Marten Pieters was cited Thursday by local newspaper The Post as saying.

Pieters was commenting on views raised by some analysts that the current boom in mobile phone business in Africa might slow down after three years.

Africa is one of the world's fastest growing mobile markets and operators are expected to enjoy a bumper 40 percent jump in subscriber numbers this year.

But analysts say this is expected to slow to between 4 and 5 percent in 2011.

Should this happen, analysts fear that service delivery in rural and economically depressed areas of the continent would be impacted, which means large swaths of Africa, where many live on less than one U.S. dollar a day, would fall behind.

"To reach these (poor) areas we will need to change the model," Pieters said, adding that sharing costs made sense for operators seeking to reach poor areas where returns on investment were slim.

Celtel International B.V. is a Dutch holding company for GSM cellular operations in 13 African countries. Celtel International has developed the pan-African local brand Celtel throughout the region and has approximately 4 million managed subscribers on its GSM networks.

Source: Xinhua