By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A senior Digicel executive has bemoaned the failure to design existing Bahamian cell phone towers for co-usage, suggesting it will cost $20,000 per location to modify them.

Frank O’Carroll, the mobile operator’s head of business development, implied that not building cell phone towers that could be shared by different operators would likely increase network roll-out costs for the company that wins the second cellular licence.

This will also potentially increase the winning bidder’s ‘time to market’ and launch of operations, and Mr O’Carroll said this was why the Utilities Regulation & Competition Authority’s (URCA) ongoing consultation on ‘infrastructure sharing regulations’ was “critically important” - both to Digicel and cellular market liberalisation.

When the second operator enters the cellular market (by October/November this year, according to the Government), it will need to ‘interconnect’ its network with BTC’s to ensure voice and data traffic flows smoothly between their respective customers.

Any delays in this process will hinder competition and consumer choice, while the construction of additional - and potentially unnecessary - cell phone towers will have negative environmental, health (possibly) and aesthetic consequences in a nation heavily reliant on the tourism industry.

“Unfortunately, the towers built in the Bahamas to-date have not been built with co-location in mind,” Mr O’Carroll told Tribune Business, estimating it would cost an average $20,000 per tower to “modify” them for facility sharing.

Given the number of existing cell towers in the Bahamas, this will likely cost a total sum running into the millions - and who pays for the upgrades, and how much, is something yet to be determined.

Cynical observers suggested to Tribune Business last week that the Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) existing cellular network was deliberately designed to impede co-location/facilities sharing, given the knowledge this would help to protect the carrier’s monopoly by delaying competition.

The struggles that BTC’s fixed-line rival, first Systems Resource Group (SRG) and then Cable Bahamas, have had in negotiating facilities sharing and interconnection agreements with the incumbent are also fresh in the memory of some.

Given this recent history, Mr O’Carroll said it was vital to both Digicel and the other bidders on the second licence that URCA had decided to complete its infrastructure sharing consultation before that was awarded.

The consultation, which is currently active in the market, will set the rules and conditions for carriers when it comes to sharing network facilities - thus hopefully eliminating the problems experienced in the Bahamian communications market’s recent history.

“They’ve had the wisdom to say that for any new tower built on any network, co-location should be explored first,” Mr O’Carroll said of URCA. “We will be a big advocate of co-location, with every location designed with co-location in mind.”

On the ‘infrastructure sharing’ consultation, he added: “It’s really important to us; it’s critically important to us, and is being done in a timely fashion. URCA had the wisdom to do this before the licence was issued.”

The global mobile communications trend towards Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology means more cell towers are required to provide countries with the necessary capacity.

“The world is moving to facility sharing. It will inevitably happen. It has to happen,” Mr O’Carroll added.