Lawmaker pushes for shared telco towers

MANILA, Philippines — Telecommunications companies in the country should share wireless communications towers to save money that could be invested in improving their services, Makati Rep. Luis Campos Jr. said yesterday.

“The immediate beneficiary of new common towers will of course be the third telecommunications player that the government is bringing in precisely to drive competition in the supply of superior internet services,” he said.

“We support every initiative that will help quickly improve public access to faster Internet connection speeds at a lower price,” he said.

Campos made the statement ahead of the Nov. 7 opening of bids for the would-be third player that will be awarded all the licenses and radio frequency bands needed to compete with PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. – the country’s two dominant telcos.

“Assuming we have independent private firms putting up new towers for collective use, the third player should be able to quickly scale up service coverage, since it can opt to just lease the new structures,” he said.

He said the third player would spend less to build fewer towers on its own, thus enabling it to spend more for faster network expansion.

“As a business model, tower sharing is nothing new. In fact, one of the Fortune 500 firms is American Tower Corp., which owns and operates over 170,000 shared wireless and broadcast communications sites in 13 countries,” he said.

Campos has been batting for the reclassification of internet access as a “basic telecommunications service” so that regulators may compel suppliers to provide rising connection speeds under pain of severe punitive fines. 

Under House Bill 5337, he wants the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) empowered to regulate both the quality and the cost of internet access by tagging it a basic service.

He said at present, the 23-year-old Philippine Public Telecommunications Policy Law treats internet access as a “value-added service” rather than a basic service. 

Thus, suppliers are relatively free to provide the service on their own terms, he said.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has already received an unsolicited proposal from a private firm that plans to construct wireless towers for shared use.

The proponent has offered to invest up to P100 billion over the next seven years to build 25,000 towers nationwide that could be leased by all telecommunications firms.

Campos said even the government might end up spending less to install the national broadband network once the shared towers are in place.