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Friday, March 29, 2024

Common tower policy enforced in early 2019

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The government is pushing for the implementation of a common tower policy by early next year despite the opposition from telecommunications companies.

“The estimated implementation of common tower policy is early next year,” Presidential Adviser on Economic Affairs and ICT Ramon Jacinto said. 

A common tower policy means operators will no longer be allowed to build towers and instead lease space from a tower company (TowerCo). 

Jacinto said Tower Cos. would concentrate on rapidly deploying towers to cover the entire Philippines, adequately freeing up the telecom operators. 

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“TowerCo’s are not a new concept around the world and is in fact a policy in many countries, including the US, Indonesia, India and many others. In each country, it has proven to improve the deployment of cellular towers and improve cellular services and coverage,” Jacinto said. 

“The Philippine needs at least around 50,000 cellular towers to be able to have the proper coverage and provide adequate service to the Philippine people but right now only has around 16,000, covering only 8,000 locations,” he said.

He estimated that building a tower would cost an average of roughly $100,000 each, and require $50 billion roll out of 50,000 towers nationwide. 

Earlier, PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. said the government could not prohibit them from building their own cellular towers. 

“Under our franchise, we are authorized to put our own networks (as) an act of Congress. They can only amend that though Congress and not even Malacañang can amend that,” Globe general counsel Froilan Castelo said.

He said prohibiting companies to build their own tower was a monopolistic act. 

PLDT chairman and chief executive Manuel Pangilinan said his company should be allowed to build its own cellular towers pursuant to the requirements of  Smart and PLDT. 

Globe and PLDT’s  expansion of network infrastructure have been hampered by permitting challenges.

At least 25 permits are needed to put up one cell site and the permitting process takes at least eight months to complete, barring major concerns from various agencies, including local government units and homeowners associations.

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