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Friday, March 29, 2024

PLDT, Globe prefer to build their own towers

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The country’s two largest telecom companies said the government cannot prohibit them from building their own cellular towers amid the proposed common tower policy. 

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. 

“It’s entirely up to the government to build its own towers and if they are going to lease the tower to us, we might lease a tower from them,” he said.

Globe Telecom Inc. general counsel Froilan Castelo said the company had no objection to the formation of a tower company in the Philippines.

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“In fact, we encourage it to help the incumbents to have a more infrastructure especially in the unserved and underserved. But our  concern is that we are being prohibited to build our own.  That is not the international practice,” Castelo said.

“Under our franchise, we are authorized to put our own networks. That’s an act of Congress. They can only amend that though Congress and not even Malacañang can amend that,” he said.

Castelo said prohibiting them from building their own towers would be tantamount to a monopolistic act. 

The Department of Information and Communication Technology earlier adopted a common tower policy to speed up the deployment of cell sites nationwide. 

A common tower means that operators will no longer be allowed to build towers but instead lease space from tower company (TowerCo). These tower companies will concentrate on rapidly deploying towers to cover the entire Philippines adequately, thereby freeing up the telecom operators. 

The Philippine needs at least around 50,000 cellular towers to have the proper coverage and provide adequate service. 

PLDT and Globe have only around 16,000 towers, covering 8,000 locations.

The government estimated that building a tower would cost an average of $100,000 per tower, and would need $50 billion to roll out the 50,000 towers nationwide.

Globe and PLDT’s expansion of network infrastructure was hampered by permitting challenges. At least 25 permits are needed to put up a cell site and the permitting process took at least eight months to complete, barring major concerns from various agencies, including local government units and homeowners associations.

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