Ooredoo spins off passive tower infrastructure unit

Details: John Tanner; Category: Operators; 05 June 2026; 960 views

Ooredoo announced its latest spinoff on Thursday with the launch of Al Abraj, a new standalone company that will independently operate and manage Ooredoo Qatar’s passive tower infrastructure assets in the country.

The launch follows the receipt of the necessary regulatory approvals from the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) and other government agencies, and marks the first operational carve-out under Ooredoo’s TowerCo initiative, a key part of Ooredoo’s broader portfolio optimisation strategy.

Ooredoo also announced that it has appointed Khalid Barzak as General Director of Al Abraj. Khalid has held leadership roles in the telecoms sector for the past 16 years. In Ooredoo Group, he has held senior leadership positions spanning telecoms, digital services, investments and partnerships.

Ooredoo credited Khalid with playing a key role in driving the growth and turnaround of Ooredoo’s digital services and partnerships businesses, which are now meaningful contributors to the group’s profitability.

“Khalid will lead Al Abraj through its next phase of development, focusing on operational excellence, value creation and supporting the long-term growth of Ooredoo’s tower infrastructure platform,” Ooredoo said in a release.

The spinoff of Ooredoo’s passive tower infrastructure business is the latest move by the company to spin off its business units following the carve-out of its regional data centre operations last year. The resulting entity, Syntys, currently operates active data centres in Qatar, Tunisia, Kuwait, Oman and Iraq.

Earlier this year, Ooredoo announced plans to spin off its international connectivity and subsea cable infrastructure business into a new independent company called Ooredoo Fibre Networks (OFN), which is expected to be completed sometime in 2027.