Globe Telecom’s chief technology officer Gil Genio says the Philippines company will build out more mobile cell sites in 2020, but admitted that the pace of development of the government’s common tower programme was slower than originally expected. ‘From a planning perspective, we will do it as if we are building everything ourselves and we will continue to do so,’ Genio said, adding: ‘The reason why we are keeping the same model [is because] there’s no real tower that has been set up for multi-tenant use. At the moment, it has not happened yet and certainly for 2020, we are not pinning our hopes.’
Ayala-led Globe recently signed memoranda of understanding (MoU) with Aboitiz InfraCapital and Frontier Tower Associates Philippines to build common telecom towers in the cities of Cebu, Davao and Olongapo. It has also signed MoUs with ISOC Infrastructure and Malaysia-based edotco Group to support the common tower initiative of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) that seeks to roll out a minimum 50,000 new common towers in the next seven to ten years.