A developer in Dhanmondi once told me with casual indifference that a mobile operator had been paying him triple the market rate for six years. When the lease expired, he simply doubled his demand. Having spent months calibrating for that exact coordinate, the operator had no choice but to pay or leave their customers in a coverage gap.
While the landlord, operator, and mobile tower company (towerCo), all knew the stakes, the only party absent from the table was the public. Ultimately, millions of ordinary subscribers shoulder the cost of these arbitrary “invisible overheads” with every recharge and data pack they buy.
This landlord-tenant dynamic, repeated across thousands of sites, is one of three structural flaws eroding Bangladesh’s digital ambitions.
The others are the ‘red tapes’ involved in site approvals and the exclusion of telecom from major public infrastructure planning.
These flaws rarely surface in a sector debate dominated by state-imposed fiscal burdens and regulatory uncertainties that I have explored in previous writings.
They accumulate silently, until one day we wake up and realize the math doesn't add up: A country claiming to be 'digitally connected' cannot deliver on that promise with just 26 towers per 100,000 people against 37 in Sri Lanka and 38 in India, and has built barely 40% of the towers it needs.
Site rental: A burden without rules
Without a standardized national policy for the leasing of private property for tower sites, Bangladesh’s telecom operators or towerCos negotiate every single site individually, in a market where the landlord frequently holds all the leverage.
In urban areas, the precise geometry of cellular coverage means that an operator cannot simply move to the next building when a renewal demand becomes unreasonable.
The site location is dictated by the physics of radio frequency. Rental costs have become a significant and growing share of operational expenditure for both mobile operators and towerCos, consuming capital that could otherwise fund new sites or network quality improvements.
Faced with an identical problem, the UK’s Electronic Communications Code (2017) addresses high site rents by implementing a "no-network" valuation principle. Under this model, a rooftop or land is valued as though no telecom equipment were ever placed on it, removing any premium that operators had been paying simply because landlords knew a tower was worth more than bare space. This approach is expected to reduce rents by approximately 40% and ensures critical infrastructure is not held for ransom simply due to property location.
Bangladesh need not import the UK’s entire legal framework, just its core principle: A statutory rental policy indexed to non-telecom land value, applied by the BTRC, enforceable through an accessible tribunal.
The investment case is clear: Predictable rental reform could attract up to $1.5 billion in foreign direct investment. That capital will remain out of reach while landlords can hold networks hostage at renewal.
The financial distress that led KKR-backed Pinnacle to halt its $300m commitment to Bangladesh’s tower sector is a sobering reminder of the cost of an unpredictable operating environment.
Why public premises are the hardest places to build
Building a telecom site on public premises in Bangladesh currently involves a process that can stretch to a year or more. Various agencies, from city corporations to civil aviation authority, highway departments or district administration, treat applications as commercial tenancy negotiations rather than public utility obligations.
With no standardized timeline or single point of contact, this bottleneck creates prolonged coverage gaps for thousands. It is a public service failure disguised as bureaucratic procedure.
To address these challenges, India amended their ‘right of way’ rules mandating a 60-day window for tower permits. If an authority fails to grant or reject the application within that time, the permit is deemedgranted.
Similarly, the United States uses a "shot clock" framework, setting 90 days for colocation and 150 days for new sites. Once these limits are exceeded, the burden of proof shifts to the local authority to justify the delay.
Bangladesh should also implement a statutory timeline, embedded in the Telecommunications Act or BTRC framework, that treats tower applications as time-sensitive by default.
A 60-day "deemed granted" rule and a single clearance portal for all agencies would transform an ordeal of undefined period into a predictable, streamlined process.
While the ‘TowerCo Build Forum 2025’ flagged site acquisition difficulty as a critical roadblock, it remains an unresolved issue that has outlasted years of regulatory debate.
Telecom: The missing link in the national projects
While Bangladesh successfully built the Padma Bridge, Karnaphuli Tunnel, and new HSIA terminal, these massive infrastructures were designed with a digital blind spot lacking embedded fiber ducts and space for telecom equipment needed to support millions of users every day.
We are now left with the “post-construction burden,” a process that is more expensive and less efficient than building-in from day one.
This systemic oversight is also visible in our other infrastructure: Over half of the nation's overhead fiber is unfit for 4G, leaving the country ill-equipped for the demands of 5G.
Singapore resolved this through its "code of practice for info-communication facilities in buildings" introduced in 2000, treating connectivity as a utility as essential as water or power. The code mandated that developers provide dedicated telecom equipment rooms, riser shafts, and fiber conduits during construction at their own expense and on a rent-free basis ensuring operators could install their equipment without negotiating access or paying for space.
The 2013 revision extended these obligations by requiring rent-free "mobile deployment space" for antenna and base station equipment inside new developments, and mandated pre-installed optical fiber termination points inside every individual residential unit. Similar to plumbing or electrical wiring, Singaporean law ensures that fiber and mobile deployment spaces are integrated by design, not added as an afterthought.
Similarly, Bangladesh must mandate telecom integration for all major public and private infrastructure, requiring pre-installed fiber ducts and designated equipment spaces as a condition for final project sign-off.
Every road, bridge, building complex, port, and airport approved without this provision is a missed opportunity that costs multiples more to retrofit later.
Where large-scale projects intersect with underserved areas, public-private partnerships should be structured to turn infrastructure corridors into connectivity engines linking agricultural hubs, economic zones, and coastal communities that the market alone will never reach.
The upfront cost of integration is negligible compared to the long-term dividend for a connected Bangladesh.
Ground rules for a truly connected nation
In Bangladesh’s tech discourse, there is a constant temptation to chase the horizon leaping to 5G timelines, AI factories, and smart cities while the unglamorous groundwork remains unfinished.
Rental policies, permit timelines, and construction standards are not exciting subjects, but they remain the invisible levers of connectivity -- a thin line between a digital infrastructure that functions and one that is perpetually announced but never quite arrives.
The landlord doubling the rent at renewal might be a rational actor in a system that gives him all the leverage.
The permit delayed six months is not necessarily corrupt -- there is simply no deadline and no incentive to move faster.
The engineers who designed Padma Bridge without fiber ducts were not negligent -- there was no obligation to include them.
Each failure traces back to the same root: A flawed framework that nobody has corrected.
Policy tools exist; international precedents are documented.
What is missing is the “will” to establish digital connectivity on ground rules that are fit for purpose.
Dr Sabbir Ahmad is an engineering and corporate leader with extensive global experience in digital connectivity, energy infrastructure, and sustainable development. He can be reached at [email protected].
