China firm seeks entry into PH tower market
Credit to Author: LISBET K. ESMAEL| Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:24:21 +0000
Another Chinese firm is looking to gain a foothold in the Philippines’ telecommunications market, this time in the area of towers that can be used by service providers.
State-owned China Energy Engineering Corp. (CEEC), which on Friday inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), said it was confident of meeting a target of 50,000 towers.
The MoU takes CEEC one step closer to becoming an accredited tower provider. Once a company seals business transactions with existing telcos, it will receive support from the DICT in terms of securing government permits in deploying towers.
Huang Fei, CEEC vice president, expressed optimism over the firm’s capacity to build the 50,000 towers — expected to cost a total of $4.4 billion — as it was constructing and maintaining 100,000 in China.
“We have no problem in building these 50,000 towers,” the company executive told reporters through an interpreter.
Huang said no initial investment and cell site numbers had been finalized as these would depend on demand from carriers.
Asked if CEEC was bullish on clinching a deal with the Mislatel consortium, the new player that is backed by China Telecommunications Corp, Huang replied that they had yet to meet.
The DICT has now signed MoUs with five companies since December, including Nigeria’s IHS Towers, Malaysia-based edotco Group, ISOC Infrastructures, and Singapore’s ISON ECP Tower Pte. Ltd.
The government wants entice foreign tower companies to invest in the telco industry and increase the number of towers to at least 50,000 from less than 20,000 currently.
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