Jacinto rejects Globe bid to be common tower company

MANILA, Philippines — The Office of the Presidential Adviser on Economic Affairs and Information Technology Communications continues to reject the move of telco giant Globe Telecom Inc. to become a common tower company.

“Globe’s desire to be the common tower company is simply not feasible as the common tower policy is being implemented by the Duterte administration precisely because of the admitted failure of the present operators to build adequate towers especially in the rural areas,” the ITC adviser’s office said.

Globe in August secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to establish a separate tower holding company which will operationalize the divestment of all or part of its tower assets through a separate company.

Globe said the establishment of a tower company would help speed up the construction and deployment of cellular towers in the country.

Presidential adviser for economic affairs and information technology communications Ramon Jacinto, however, has been pushing for a limit in the number of registered common tower companies in the country and to make it available only to independent firms under the draft common tower policy.

Under the draft, a maximum of two independent tower companies will be registered by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) in the first four years of the implementation of the common tower policy, after which the NTC may register new tower firms, if necessary, especially in rural areas.

Deployment of all telecommunications towers shall be performed only by the NTC-registered tower companies, except when it is unable to do so despite the request from the telco operators.

According to Jacinto’s office, having an independent common tower policy will provide a level playing field “by insulating the tower company from undue influence by any operator and no mobile telco operator shall own equity to ensure that no mobile telco operator will have undue influence or advantage over one another in tower sharing.”

It is also seen optimizing the use of capex where telcos will no longer have to put up separate towers and can concentrate resources on upgrading and expanding cellular radios.

“The Philippines needs around 50,000 tower locations to adequately service the country. For the past 20 years, Globe and Smart have only built 16,000 towers and most are duplications, so effectively we only have roughly 10,000 tower locations serving 105 million people, while Indonesia has 100,000 towers serving 250 million people,” the OPA-EAITC said.

In response, Globe said the Philippines would need as many tower companies as possible to construct the required towers within the shortest possible time given the increasing demand for coverage and capacity.

As such, the Ayala-led telco said limiting the construction of towers to two-player independent tower companies “unfairly discriminates against the other models and is contrary to best practices.”

Smart, in its position paper, has also expressed its opposition against the provision in the draft common tower policy indicating that mobile network operators would no longer be able to build or construct their own telecommunication towers.

“It bears stressing that Smart is expressly granted the right to construct telecommunications towers pursuant to its franchise. Here, the propose memorandum circular violates Smart’s franchise,” the wireless arm of PLDT said.