Two tower firms enough for 3 telco players

Credit to Author: LISBET K. ESMAEL| Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:26:04 +0000

Esperon

THE National Security Agency (NSA) on Friday joined businessman Ramon Jacinto in asserting that two common tower companies are “more than enough” to serve the Philippine telecommunications industry.

In a joint statement, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon and Jacinto, presidential adviser on economic affairs and information technology communications, said “the industry standard is [that] tower companies number half of the operators in other countries, so in the Philippines, two licensed tower companies in the initial
four years [are] more than enough, since there are only three players,” referring to PLDT Inc., Globe Telecom and new major telecommunications company (telco) Mindanao Islamic Telephone Co. Inc. (Mislatel).

According to them, an independent common tower policy would provide physical security arrangements for such towers and a centralized fight against cyberattacks.
“Especially with the entry of the third telco…tower companies must be kept independent from any ownership from the mobile telco operators and must work closely with the NSA,” they said.

Implementing such a policy, in which existing telcos would be barred from establishing their own tower firms, could hasten the deployment of cell sites, as these will do the job, they added

This should benefit PLDT, Globe and Mislatel, as this would save them billions of pesos in building cell towers, Jacinto and Esperon said.

“[They can] concentrate resources on upgrading and expanding [their] cellular radios,” he added.

“For the past 20 years, Globe and [PLDT digital wireless subsidiary] Smart have only built 16,000 towers and most are duplications, so effectively we only have roughly 10,000 tower locations… while in Indonesia they have 100,000 towers serving 250 million people.”

PLDT and Globe’s legislative franchises, however, give them the right to own and establish cell sites. They had also claimed that they have the capacity to add more cell sites, but argued that their slow deployment should be blamed on the government’s system on securing permit issues.

Under the draft rule, the policy seeks to increase the footprint to 50,000 towers to ensure quality services for more than 100 million subscribers.

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