Kazakhstan’s largest independent towerco, LC Commerce, owns almost all of the independently managed towers in Central Asia that TowerXchange monitors. LC Commerce has developed its portfolio through sale and leaseback transactions with two of the country’s three MNOs - ALTEL-owned Tele2 and Kcell, owned by Kazakhtelecom.
It continues to grow its portfolio through build-to-suit demand from the two operators.
Market leaders, Beeline, are owned by VEON’s new Russian-free parent group. The other MNOs, Kcell and Tele2/ALTEL, are at present 100% owned by state-backed Kazakhtelecom. Kazakhtelecom acquired Tele2’s shareholding in mid 2019 and has just announced it’ll sell it to Qatari investor Power International Holding for US$ 1.1bn.
Both Kazakhtelecom owned MNOS won 5G spectrum licences which also include them activating over 7,000 base stations and providing 5G coverage in 75% of cities by 2027. Until recently local MNOs have considered passive infrastructure as a source of competitive advantage and have refused to share towers. TowerXchange understands that the country’s MNOs will relinquish the majority of their towers. Kcell has 2,500 towers, but TowerXchange understands it is further from selling its towers than other operators.
Meanwhile, VEON-backed Beeline is believed to have a macro footprint of around 1,500 towers (in addition to shareable and non-shareable rooftops) but will eventually sell its towers to help fulfil its strategic plans to be an asset-light digital operation. It plans to create a special purpose company to house the towers and “transform” all the tower sites to get the best return on a sale.
Beeline’s tower carve-out and sale strategy is becoming ever clearer in Central Asia, in fact. Over in neighbouring country Uzbekistan, the mobile operator recently established National Tower Infrastructure, which has received the majority of Beeline’s tower assets, comprising approximately 4,000 towers, and is in the process becoming the leading company in the country.
