Government regulators issued a draft circular, prohibiting existing telecom players from building their own cellular towers.
Under the draft joint memorandum circular issued by Department of Information and Communications Technology and National Telecommunications Commission on common and shared infrastructure in the public telecommunications market, future deployment of all towers should be performed only by the tower companies registered with the NTC.
The only exception is when the mobile network operator demonstrates that the tower company is “unable, despite request and a lapse of 30 days from request, to provide the necessary facility to the MNO, in which case the MNO itself can build its own towers.”
Globe Telecom head of corporate and legal services group Froilan Castelo, during the public consultation, opposed the proposal of DICT and NTC to prohibit them from building their own towers in the future.
“We do not see how an independent tower company can alleviate or ease out the problems that we are fixing. They are private companies, the same as us and they are going to face the same problems. We do not see any reason how this will help us. If we are going to make this exclusive, we do not know and we do not see how this will speed up the rollout,” Castelo said.
“Preventing us from doing that is a violation of our contract and with the constitution. What we right now need is the easing out of bureaucracy in the government,” he said.
Presidential adviser on economic affairs and ICT Ramon Jacinto said “Globe and Smart have lost their moral ascendancy to start building towers.”
“That’s the very reason why you cannot provide the service to the public and now you say you can,” Jacinto said.
“Please don’t say that the independent tower company is not successful. It has been successful in other countries. Why don’t you give it the benefit of the doubt?,” he said.
The draft order states that MNOs should providethe TowerCos, through the NTC, network rollout plans and other information that the regulator may deem necessary to facilitate the TowerCo’s build-out of common tower infrastructure.
“TowerCos shall be independent of the MNOs and the MNOs shall not own any equity in the TowerCos in order to promote tower sharing, non-discriminatory access, uniformity and transparency in tower leasing arrangements,” the draft circular read.
“To promote the viability of the policy, a maximum of two independent TowerCos will be registered by the NTC in the first four years of the implementation of this policy,” it said.
After the initial period, the NTC may register new TowerCos if necessary, especially in rural areas.
IHS Towers, Telenor ASA, Energy China , ATC India and Frontier Tower Associates requested the DICT to increase the number of tower companies to more than two operators.
Acting DICT Secretary Eliseo Rio said the agency was expecting to name the new tower company by November this year.
“We are considering all suggestions and we will come up [with] a more acceptable policy for all,” he said.