Globe renews call to clear roadblocks in cellular tower development

MANILA, Philippines — Telco giant Globe Telecom Inc. has renewed its call to the government to address roadblocks in the development of cellular towers nationwide.

“I know site density is a hard problem to solve. It is not entirely within our control, but this is a message from a public policy perspective that we are consistently giving our government. Allow us to build more sites faster to the same degree as Vietnam that has 75,000 sites already versus our barely 23,000 as a country, and overall power consumption of both operators and consumers will actually come down,” Globe chief technology and information officer Gil Genio said yesterday during Globe’s 3rd Power Summit.

Genio said a more dense cell site network allows both telecom operator as well as individual consumers to lower their overall power consumption.

“The reality in the Philippines is that the more dense site network we have, the less power our cell sites will consume. What is not well understood is that the more dense site network we have, the less power our cells sites will consume in aggregate,” he said.

Genio said Globe is utilizing 360 megawatts per hour of electricity equivalent to P3.5 billion to power its network every year.

For the past three years, he said Globe’s network is consuming nine million liters of diesel annually, amounting to P348 million.

“Climate change is one of the greatest global challenges the world has ever faced. The positive economic impact of us in telecom is undeniable — from connectivity to contribution to GDP and employment. But the downside is the energy consumption that powers our developments,” Genio said.

Globe has been undertaking “green” initiatives in recent years to help mitigate the impact of climate change.

The company  almost doubled the deployment of green network solutions to 6,314 last year from just 3,350 in 2017.

The use of green network solutions, like fuel cell system and lithium ion batteries, is aimed at minimizing carbon emissions, especially as Globe continues to widen its network footprint in the country.

As far as  cell site deployment is concerned, Globe has been lamenting the continued challenging environment in putting up cell sites in the country which it referred to as the telecommunication industry’s single biggest challenge at present.

Globe said the setting up of  more telecom infrastructure continues to be challenging in the country, hampered by lengthy permit applications and some uncooperative stakeholders.