Zain and Ooredoo close first phase of tower JV with 4,000 towers

Zain Group and Ooredoo have closed the first phase of their telecom tower joint venture, combining their tower assets in Kuwait and Qatar into a 50/50 platform of approximately 4,000 towers.

The closing comes nearly three years after the two carriers signed the agreement to form the venture, which carried a reported $2.2 billion value at the time. Data Center Dynamics reported the launch.

The roughly 4,000 towers now in the platform are about 13% of the roughly 30,000 towers the carriers said the combined company would comprise across the Middle East and North Africa when the venture was first announced. Zain said in the announcement that additional tower portfolios "are expected to be integrated progressively into the platform, subject to applicable closing conditions and required regulatory and other approvals."

The platform is intended to support delivery of infrastructure-as-a-service, which the carriers said will create opportunities for operators to access infrastructure in a "more capital-efficient manner while supporting the continued development of the region's digital infrastructure."

Bader Al-Kharafi, Zain's vice-chairman and group chief executive, called the first closing "a defining step in the evolution of digital infrastructure for both Zain and Ooredoo," describing a shared strategy of building "focused, scalable and sustainable platforms" that also support reducing the region's carbon footprint. He thanked Kuwait's regulatory authorities for their support in the approval process. Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Ooredoo's group chief executive, said the platform has "a clear path to expansion through additional market contributions" and that Ooredoo is "now executing across every digital infrastructure segment identified in our strategy."

The distance between the roughly 4,000 towers in this closing and the 30,000 the carriers once described is the number that matters for the platform's economics. Whether it gets there depends on further portfolios clearing the closing conditions and regulatory approvals Zain described — a process the first phase has shown takes years, not months.