Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has initiated a move to declare significant market power (SMP) in the tower sharing business sector.
The initiative has been taken as part of the commission’s move to implement significant market power regulations 2018 in the tower sharing sector, an official of the commission told New Age.
BSEC, as part of its move to implement the SMP regulations in the mobile telecom sector, has already declared Grameenphone as significant market power.
The official said that the commission would now initially identify the criteria based on which the SMP operator would be declared from the mobile phone tower companies.
For the mobile phone sector, BTRC has set number of customers, acquired revenue and spectrum of the companies as the benchmark for determining SMP operator.
The SMP regulations, formulated to promote competition and to prevent anti-competitive behaviour of any operator in the telecom sector, allows the telecom regulator to declare segment specific SMP in the telecommunication sector.
Besides setting the criteria for determining SMP in tower sharing companies, a committee formed to deal with the SMP-related issues would also determine the business segments which could come under restrictions for the SMP operator.
The commission would make its final decision in this regard based on the report to be submitted by the committee.
BSEC on February 10 this year declared Grameenphone as significant market power based on two parameters — acquired revenue and customer.
For the mobile telephone sector, BTRC set twenty areas on which the SMP operator might face restrictions in operating its services.
Of the areas, BTRC initially imposed sanction on GP in four areas — MNP, exclusivity, quality of service and market communication.
The commission, however, withdrew the sanction on Tuesday and sought GP’s opinions on the proposed twenty areas.
In the tower business, four mobile phone operators along with tower sharing companies have more than 30,000 mobile phone towers installed across the country.
In November last year, the government handed over tower sharing licences to four entities to ensure effective and maximum utilisation of resources.
Edotco Bangladesh, Summit Towers Limited, Kirtonkhola Tower Bangladesh and AB Hightech Consortium were given the tower company licences.
Of the companies, Edotco Bangladesh has been operating the business in the country since 2013.
As per Edotco Group data, Edotco Bangladesh has 9,900 towers and manages the towers installed across the country.
Source: http://www.newagebd.net/article/68451/btrc-may-declare-smp-in-mobile-tower-sector