By Semafor Africa
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Helios Towers, one of Africa’s largest telecoms infrastructure companies, is betting that a boom in 5G and AI technologies will drive significant revenue growth over the next five years.
The London-listed company, which operates in eight African countries, leases towers to mobile phone companies serving 150 million customers. This month, it reported a 14% year-on-year increase in adjusted EBITDA, reaching $421 million in 2024.
The adoption of 4G and 5G provides users with faster internet speeds and the ability to use more data on everything from streaming services to banking applications. Helios Towers CEO Tom Greenwood told Semafor these advances, along with the increasingly widespread use of “hugely data consumptive” AI applications, was driving data use.
“The amount of data going through the mobile networks is exponentially growing, and that simply means you need a lot more antennae around a given location,” Greenwood said. “Antennas, for us, mean tenancies, which means revenues.”
Global telecoms industry body GSMA predicts mobile data traffic in sub-Saharan Africa will quadruple over the next five years.
Read on for more about mobile data usage trends. →
