PLDT, Globe may sell off 16,000 towers

Philippines House Representative Luis Campos Jr. has suggested that the country’s two dominant telecoms operators – PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom – will likely end up selling off their wireless telecoms tower assets to any one of the seven independent firms currently considering establishing a new shared tower network. ‘We see both PLDT and Globe eventually assigning their 16,000 towers to any or all of the non-aligned firms providing shared towers, now that the government has permitted at least seven of them to operate,’ Campos is quoted by local press as saying. Rep. Campos was speaking in the wake of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT’s) decision to authorise Aboitiz InfraCapital to build new towers for shared use – joining ISOC Infrastructures, ISON ECP Tower, IHS Holding, edotco Group, China Energy Equipment Co and RT Telecom. Campos sees the common towers plan as an important part of plans to drive internet connectivity across the Philippines and believes that the pair ‘will likely consolidate and spin off their tower assets into separate subsidiaries, and then put them up for sale to the independent tower entities’, adding that the common tower network plan most benefits the third telco, Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company (Mislatel), which will need to spend less on fewer towers of its own as part of its network deployment.