Globe inks agreement with American Tower unit

LISTED Globe Telecom Inc. announced on Tuesday that it had signed another common- tower agreement, this time with a unit of American Tower Corp.

In a statement, the Ayala- led telecommunications giant said that under the deal, Transcend Towers Infrastructure ( Philippines) Inc. would establish an initial 150 towers in northern Luzon.

This agreement is the third Globe - structure Inc. and Malaysia’s edotco Group Sbn. Bhd., involves building 150 towers in Region 4A (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon provinces, or Calabarzon); and the second, with Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc. and Frontier Tower Associates Philippines, covers establishing towers and other passive network infrastructure in Cebu, Subic and Davao.

- celerate our infrastructure build [in northern Luzon] for our customers - cer Rizza Maniego-Eala was quoted as saying in the statement.

Meanwhile, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is looking to release within this quarter its draft common-tower policy that targets to free telcos from expensive tower deployment.

Dominant telcos PLDT Inc. and Globe had long blamed red tape for the slow deployment of cell sites, saying at least 20 permits were needed to construct one tower.

Currently, the Philippines has more than 17,000 such sites. The government wants to raise this to 50,000.

Globe shares decreased by P58 apiece on Tuesday.