The World Bank’s recent development update shows that Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. Since the Taliban takeover the economy has contracted for two consecutive years with real GDP growth falling from around 10% in 2019 to –5% in 2022. Despite a sharp decline in inflation improving household good prices, monetary poverty still affects over half the population.
This has unsurprisingly impacted the telecoms sector, which is sitting near the bottom of the world’s telecom market maturity ranking. Despite the previous administrations attempts to improve network coverage, Taliban rule risks undoing this development.
Afghanistan - telecom market statistics Q3 2024
Afghanistan has five MNOs, Afghan Wireless (AWCC) which was the country’s fastest growing MNO, Roshan which is funded by the Aga Khan Development Fund and was the country’s largest MNO, multi-national player Etisalat, and newcomer Afghan Telecom which is part of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
MTN has completed the sale of its Afghan business unit to Beirut-based holding company M1 New Ventures for US$35mn, although this was expected to finalise by the end of 2023. This completes the operator’s regional strategy of exiting the Middle East to focus on their core African markets having previously exited Yemen and Syria.
Each of the operators own almost all of their sites, with the MNOs understood to have between 1,000-1,500 towers each. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of Afghanistan (ATRA) website is no longer available but in 2021 it counted 6,917 base stations in the country.
Asia Consultancy Group is the country’s sole towerco and owns around 100 towers which it makes available for co-location and RAN sharing services.
The deteriorating security situation and Taliban demands to shutdown sites to avoid surveillance stymied investment. Since the takeover and Afghanistan’s exit from international markets all investment has frozen and the focus is on keeping sites operational so that Afghanistan’s remaining subscribers can access services. No accurate count of active SIMs was available.
99% of sites run on gensets – even in cities – and the biggest challenge is getting fuel delivered to sites. Solar solutions had been examined but the payback period means that MNOs have been reluctant to invest.
There are few to no major international contractors operating in the market, and TowerXchange understands that mobile operators are having difficulty paying suppliers.
The Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) is still seeking to expand mobile coverage, with plans for new mobile sites in Paktika province, according to Pajhwok Afghan News. However, TowerXchange is aware of no appetite for outside investment in the market.
