HS Engineering is one of the main suppliers for the telecom industry in Bangladesh. edotco’s regular collaborator, the company provides a wide variety of products and services ranging from bamboo towers to lithium-ion batteries and hybrid systems. TowerXchange interviewed the company’s Director, Syed Shafiqul Hassan, to learn more about HS’ services and success stories in one of the most promising tower markets in Asia.
TowerXchange: Could you please introduce HS Engineering to our readers?
Syed Shafiqul Hassan, Director, HS Engineering:
HS Engineering is one of the fastest growing organisations in Bangladesh. We provide EPC services and power equipment to the telecom infrastructure industry. We have two factories in Bangladesh and China and we have also introduced our products in Singapore and Sri Lanka.
We provide a wide range of products and equipment, from camouflaged towers and smart poles to cabinets, power rectifiers, lithium-ion batteries and hybrid energy systems.
TowerXchange: What is unique about your value proposition and services?
Syed Shafiqul Hassan, Director, HS Engineering:
All our products are environmentally friendly. We develop tailored and cost-effective solutions for our clients and all our products are customised to meet the specific needs of each of them. First, we gather each customer’s requirements and create a personalised solution for each of them, always prioritising sustainability.
Our structures ease 4G and 5G equipment deployment and we provide long-term guarantees, maintenance and support for all our products. We have an extensive experience in telecom and we really understand the needs and expectations of our clients as we have been working closely with towercos and operators in Bangladesh for the last seven years.
TowerXchange: For the last couple of years there has been a lot of excitement about Bangladesh, but besides edotco, towercos have not been able to develop a relevant footprint. What are your views on the market and what are the main opportunities?
Syed Shafiqul Hassan, Director, HS Engineering:
Effectively, edotco was the very first towerco to enter Bangladesh, as the company started operations back in 2012. They faced no competition and they were able to establish fruitful partnerships with the four country MNOs Robi, Grameenphone, Teletalk and Banglalink.
In 2018, our government developed a policy to ease the entrance of more towercos in the market and hosted an auction that awarded four towerco licenses. However, this policy has been the first attempt to create guidelines for infrastructure sharing in Bangladesh, there’s been acceptance issues with some of the policy clauses.
To date, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is still negotiating with key industry stakeholders. When the negotiation is finalised we expect that the current licensed towercos will start operating and building new sites. We have around 34,000 towers, which is not enough for Bangladesh as many areas are still out of coverage and the signal is very poor. Therefore, there will be plenty of growth opportunities for towercos and suppliers.
TowerXchange: What are the main challenges that MNOs are facing in the country?
Syed Shafiqul Hassan, Director, HS Engineering:
We see that site acquisition and space availability are some of the main challenges for MNOs so we are developing smaller cabinets and reducing the BTS area. In addition, power reliability is a big issue in Bangladesh so we are developing hybrid solar solutions and integrating lithium-ion batteries to provide power supply and backup, especially in remote locations.
In Bangladesh and elsewhere in Asia, electricity bills can be extremely high. To reduce this opex, we can develop large-scale solar systems to power telecom operations.
TowerXchange: You have successfully deployed sustainable solutions for towercos and MNOs in very challenging scenarios. Could you share some success stories and results with us?
Syed Shafiqul Hassan, Director, HS Engineering:
Indeed, we have faced many different challenges and worked in fairly difficult scenarios.
In Bangladesh, we supply a lot of energy equipment, from batteries to wind turbines and other heavy tools for our hybrid systems. Sometimes we have to carry that equipment across two or three rivers before reaching the construction site and that is one of the most common logistic challenges we face.
Our last order was around 140 sites and the client gave us a deadline of 60 days. We had very little time to complete this arduous process as we had to go through the site survey, trim brushes, supply the equipment, deliver the sites and do all the testing and commissioning in this challenging scenario. Despite all the difficulties, we were able to deliver the sites before the deadline thanks to our very experienced team.
Another story that I’d like to share is a partnership with edotco as part of the company’s CSR initiatives. In Bangladesh, even in urban areas, many people don’t have access to electricity so we developed a solar solution that is powering edotco’s sites while providing electricity to the community by connecting 600 households. edotco is now planning to connect another 600 houses in different remote areas.
We have also collaborated with edotco in the deployment of the country’s first bamboo tower, another sustainable and ground-breaking initiative.
