Paratus Telecom cries foul about infrastructure

Telecommunications company, Paratus Telecom, believes that dominant players in the market should be forced to share infrastructure that is available and lessen barriers of entry into the market for others and stop with delay tactics.
As part of the Communication Regulatory Authority’s (CRAN) call out for comments from the industry, stakeholders and the public, Paratus Telecom complained of site sharing challenges such as delay tactics from infrastructure owners that averaged a waiting period of one and a half years.
“Some sites took forever to obtain, anything from six months to three years with no response from some operators. While applications lost by operators lead to a lack of feedback,” the comments read,
giving the example of how Cell-One rolled out towers in the same yard in some cases as Telecom Namibia towers.
Paratus Telecom said in their submitted comments that the regulations should be adapted to the Namibia market by the CRAN and not European standards.
“Paratus Telecom does not understand why case studies from foreign countries are used as a guideline for Infrastructure rules and regulations in Namibia. We have our specific geographical layout and population and diverse culture and we should have our own unique solution,” the comments read.
Paratus suggested that all the role players should get together and structure the best possible solution for all Namibian operators and that CRAN should approve or decline applications on the approved criteria which ought to be standard for all.
Furthermore, Paratus suggested time frames for Passive Infrastructure Sharing instead of delaying new operators from rolling out services in a timely manner.
“Due to the small population it makes little or no sense for all operators to be installing the same infrastructure which wastes time and money getting the services to market,” Paratus Telecom said, adding that such resources could be used on other strategic investments and services for under-served areas instead of duplicating equipment.
Paratus currently shares ducts and sub-ducts as per requirement from the City of Windhoek, so as other operators do not install additional ducts on pavements and side streets.
The company is also busy rolling out fiber cables with sufficient ducts for future use by other operators as well as rack space sharing to various corporate customers and on site sharing of tower space. Paratus is also doing involved active sharing services include the sharing of dedicated fiber cables in a Point-2-Point connection. The sharing and co-location on national infrastructure such as telephone poles and unbundling of Last Mile connections to unserved ares.