Executive Summary

The global telecommunications industry is at the crossroads. While on one hand, it will continue to act as a key engine for innovation, inclusivity and digital innovation in fuelling explosive demand, telecom operators will continue to be under immense pressure to unlock viable emerging business cases as revenues have stagnated amidst ever-growing costs and the need for fresh capital injection ensues.

Further, there is an urgent need to transform the traditional business models and network deployment strategies especially with 5G on the horizon. Expectation from 5G is high – yielding a paradigm shift against its predecessors, but this may come with complex partnership and integration requirement, infrastructure expansion and investment.

Against this backdrop, TowerCos in emerging Asian countries will continue to play a pivotal role in evolving infrastructure ecosystem to ensure efficiency, scalability and flexibility with a projected contribution of USD 10 billion of savings accrued to the MNOs, yielding an incremental consumer benefit of USD 67 billion from price improvement and GDP growth, as well as a reduction of up to 17 million metric tonnes of carbon footprint by 2025.