Telecom operators should share infrastructure to speed up development of the industry and to suppress the cost of data.

This is according to Dr. Bitange Ndemo, the honorary chairperson for the Alliance for Affordable Internet, who was speaking at Mobile East Africa 2014 event in Nairobi on Wednesday.

Ndemo said that telecoms should come together and share infrastructure for the sake of the industry.

“Companies should share infrastructure to bring down the cost of doing business,” Ndemo said.

But in a separate interview, acting chief executive officer of Liquid Telecom Kenya, Ben Roberts, said that regulators should not involve themselves with matters such as building fibre networks.

“Should regulators build fibre? The regulator is there to stimulate the telecoms and they can do that by making the environment better for us. Telecoms companies are good at this. We know what we are doing,” Roberts told ITWeb Africa.

He added that the only time when intervention is needed is when there are no players from the private sector building network infrastructure.

Even so, Roberts encouraged more co-ordination in the putting up of infrastructure.

“When it comes to digging up fibre, these things need coordination,” Roberts said.

He said that government bodies who are in charge of infrastructure should allow more opportunity to lay fibre.