The Ugandan telecom market is dominated by two players; market leader MTN with 53.9% and Airtel Uganda with 45.1%.
Rowad Capital has agreed to acquire a 60% stake of state-owned MNO Utel for US$225mn which has been financially struggling since its launch in 2021 and has already relinquished its assets and operations held under a court-appointed administration currently owned by the ministries of Finance and ICT.
Smile Communications provides 4G LTE services but was disconnected from ATC Uganda’s network due to unpaid lease fees.
Uganda telecom market statistics Q3 2024
American Tower is the dominant towerco in Uganda, having acquired their footprint in the market from their acquisition of Eaton Towers, who in turn had acquired the towers of Orange, Warid and Airtel, since adding MTN’s sites to their portfolio.
ATC Uganda has been focused on building out Kampala’s smart city netwok, working with the city municipality to install SMART pole street furniture to power lighting and CCT security as well as some DAS and inbuilding as well.
Uganda estimated tower ownership Q3 2024
Local towerco Ubuntu Towers was acquired by AXIAN’s towerco arm TowerCo of Africa in 2021, breaking ATC Uganda’s monopoly, and secured US$40mn financing from the European Investment Bank to deploy an extra 506 towers over the next two years.
Around 27% of sites are off-grid, with both ATC Uganda and TowerCo of Africa providing power solutions, the latter looking to run all sites with solar and battery backup and working with Polarium to deploy lithium-ion batteries. While grid coverage is good, the cost of energy is very high and operational costs have pushed some MNOs out of the market.
Uganda’s telecom regulator UCC has mandated MNOs to achieve 90% national geographic coverage within 5 years of being licensed, and the ICT Ministry is carrying out a study to explore a World Bank-funded project for rural coverage, targeting refugee-hosting areas.
