Abdul Mannan Kakar

In December 2018, Saudi Telecom Company (stc) announced the carve-out of its towers and the establishment of a new subsidiary - TAWAL - to provide leading integrated ICT infrastructure in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. TAWAL was launched on April 1st, 2019 after obtaining its license from CITC making it the region’s first and largest Telecommunications Tower Company. TAWAL now owns a portfolio of more than 15,000 telecom towers spread across the Kingdom and is establishing itself as the leading player in the Saudi telecommunications infrastructure market, aspiring to extend its services and coverage across the region. TAWAL’s mandate is to boost infrastructure sharing to enable its customers to: - Achieve operational efficiencies. - Minimize expenses. - Reduce environmental impact. TAWAL’s core activities involve designing, building, and managing consolidated telecom infrastructure facilities that enable state-of-the-art and modular connectivity. By enhancing tower sharing, TAWAL enables its partners to attain operational excellence and accrue higher profits resulting from reduced capital expenses for network rollouts and lowered operating expenses for managing infrastructure at multiple sites. Tower sharing also provides additional benefits for congested urban areas, including minimizing infrastructure duplications and excessive network redundancies, as well as reducing visual pollution that usually results from dense equipment installations.   We own and manage the passive infrastructure of our towers and lease space to service providers in addition to government entities and communication businesses. We are also planning for expansions to benefit from economies of scale and develop value-added services. Looking ahead, TAWAL is bracing for a new era of technologies and adjacent innovative services such as small cells, IBS, and fiber. Furthermore, TAWAL plans to extend its geographic reach to cover new cities, rural areas, and remote destinations.