IHS Towers is one of the largest independent owners, operators and developers of shared telecommunications infrastructure in the world.
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Our experience has provided us with over two decades of insight, extensive operational talent, and strong relationships with stakeholders that enables us to enhance our leadership position in existing and new markets. To deliver for our customers, as well as generate strong financial returns and growth, we draw on our key strengths:
We are dedicated to engineering excellence and provide a wide range of telecommunications infrastructure solutions and managed services to enable our customers to achieve their connectivity goals, including:
IHS Towers brings the power of mobile technology to hundreds of millions, accelerating the digitalization of economies through the acquisition, management and construction of critical national infrastructure.
Emerging markets represent some of the fastest growing wireless communications opportunities in the world with growing demand from subscribers for data services and increasing access to smartphones driving demand for wireless telecommunications infrastructure.
Our nine markets have a total mobile subscriber base of approximately 365 million as at March 2021. In Brazil and Nigeria, for example, there are over 150 million and 100 million mobile subscribers, respectively. These markets are both expected to grow considerably over the next few years in terms of subscribers and required infrastructure.
GSMA estimates that 167 million new unique mobile subscribers are expected in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2018 and 2025, a further 77 million in the Middle East and North Africa and 68 million in Latin America. In many of our markets, we continue to see 4G penetration rising ahead of the onset of 5G penetration in the future. The combination of low existing penetration, high subscriber growth and strong increase in demand for data services, supports major investment opportunities at every point along the mobile supply chain – from handsets to tower infrastructure.
Even in Kuwait, where 5G is rolling out and smartphone penetration is among the highest in the Middle East, customers demand high data plans as early adopters of new technology. As new technology becomes available and carriers increase bandwidth, data usage is expected to continue to increase, requiring additional infrastructure.
Connecting people and their communities
Mobile use throughout emerging markets, and the towers that enable it, are not just a business story; they are a social phenomenon, as mobile connectivity empowers people economically, and links them and their communities to each other and the world beyond. For example, in Rwanda mobile phone payment software has opened opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses by providing ease and flexibility of use. Farmers throughout emerging markets can receive the latest market prices with a single text message or gather information about sales and stock. Improving education throughout emerging markets is at the heart of solving many economic, social and healthcare problems. Increasingly, mobile communications are understood to be key to remote learning in rural portions of the world and mobile phones also have enormous potential to impact e-banking, mobile money and insurance platforms to name just a few.
Customer focused
Our primary customers are the leading mobile network operators (MNOs) and other communications service providers in each of our markets. Our success in establishing deep customer relationships and operational excellence has enabled us to grow both organically and through 18 transactions, building a footprint that currently covers Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Rwanda, Zambia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Kuwait. We are the largest tower operator in six of the nine markets in which we operate and are the only independent tower operator of scale in five of these markets.
Market-leading uptime
In Europe or the US, network downtime is a rare inconvenience. However, in emerging markets where there are far fewer fixed lines, less broadband penetration and at times an unreliable power supply, network downtime can have far reaching implications. We believe we are the most reliable tower operator in emerging markets.
Long-term thinking
The story of mobile in emerging markets, and therefore our story, is still in its early days. We expect IHS Towers to play a vital role in the future development and continued growth of these important markets.
IHS Towers focuses on three areas in order to operate greener, more reliable towers than its peers:
