DICT scraps cap on common tower pool

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has scrapped its previous plan to cap at 15 the number of foreign and local common tower providers as it decided to accommodate more firms vying to invest in towers in the country.

“It was the Philippine Competition Commission that advised us not to have a cap on towercos but instead let market forces determine how many the telecommunication industry can accommodate,” Information and Communications Technology Acting Secretary Eliseo Rio told The STAR.

“It was actually positive that we were able to attract that many tower companies that are interested to invest in towers in the Philippines,” he said.

Seven firms have been added to the pool of common tower providers since Rio announced in March that the government was capping at 15 its list of interested common tower providers.

“We will put it on hold for the meantime because 15 may be too much to handle. We will stop for the meantime because I think we have gotten the best of the best,” Rio said in an interview last March.

The seven new addition were LCS Holdings Inc. of politician Luis “Chavit” Singson, China Construction First Group Corp., ACODA Towers Sdn Bhd, CREI Management Services FZE, Tamoin Industrial Services Corp., EEI Corp., and Tiger Infrastructure Pte. Ltd.

They join other aspiring firms that include ISOC Infrastructures Inc., a company chaired by Megawide Construction Corp. co-founder Michael Cosiquien, ISON ECP Tower Singapore Pte. Ltd., Edotco Group Sdn Bhd and RT Telecom Sdn Bhd of Malaysia, IHS Towers, China Energy Equipment Co. Ltd., Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., MGS Construction Inc., American Towers, Frontier Tower Associates Management, Phil Tower Consortium (Global Networks Inc. and JTower Inc.), JS Cruz Construction and Development Inc., DT Towers, Korea’s Shinheung Telecom Co. Ltd., and Filipino-Indian consortium ALT Global Solutions Inc.

All the 22 firms have signed their respective memoranda of understanding (MOU) with the DICT, expressing their intent to support the government’s common tower initiative which seeks to have at least 50,000 new common towers built across the country in the next seven to 10 years.

The MOUs signed with the 22 tower firms require these companies to secure first a business contract from the telcos before the DICT provides assistance in their rollout plans through facilitation of permits, right of way, and other government permits for infrastructure.

Last Friday, the DICT issued the rules on the so-called “accelerated roll-out of common towers,” which will be a proof of concept to serve as the basis of a more comprehensive rules and guidelines governing passive telecommunications infrastructure sharing.

It will also pilot and test the common tower initiative of the government while also acquainting independent tower companies in the Philippine telecommunications market.   

Under the rules of the accelerated roll-out of common towers, some 2,500 sites, most of which are owned by the DICT and other government agencies, will serve as locations for common towers.

Telcos will now select from the 2,500 sites and contract any of the 22 common tower companies to put up a cell site infrastructure to be shared with other telcos and interested stakeholders.

Once a contract between the telco and common tower firm has been made, the DICT would then enter into a memorandum of agreement with the selected tower company to ensure that all government requirements and permits in putting up the common towers will be facilitated by the agency.

The test rollout plan pushes back the much awaited release of the final guidelines for the country’s policy on shared telco infrastructure by another two to three months, according to Rio.