A rising tower of power in the telco industry
AN asean-based telecommunications infrastructure company, EdgePoint infrastructure focuses on building and leasing shareable, fiber-integrated, tower infrastructure as well as providing solutions such as small cells and in-building systems. it has secured more than 13,000 sites across Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
EdgePoint Philippines officially entered the Philippine market in April 2022, and it currently serves Smart, Globe and DITO. To date, EdgePoint Philippines operates over 2,800 active sites in the country.
EdgePoint’s partnership with Philippine telcos helps to strengthen connectivity across the country, allowing citizens to enjoy faster mobile and broadband speeds in key areas nationwide.
In an exclusive face-to-face interview with The Manila Times, William Walters, chief executive at EdgePoint Philippines, provided unique perspectives into the country’s telecommunications infrastructure landscape as well as deep insights into the company’s growth milestones and its future expansion plans.
Achievements in 2023
EdgePoint closed 2023 with about 2,850 towers, over 15 percent year-on-year growth. In less than two years, it gained a 2023 market share of about 23 percent, becoming the third-largest telecommunications tower provider in the Philippines.
“Our target is to try and build as many as we can, as the towerco industry in general would be hoping to roll out at least 1,500 new builds a year,” said Walters.
“And then you’ve got a lot of colocation projects going on as well where we have bought a tower from SMART and another operator can take space on that tower as a way to optimize usage of telco towers. Plus there’s also synergy at play in the market from a cost perspective. All telcos are really trying to shift to a co-location model to get more rollouts in underserved areas.
“Now, I see significant rollouts continuing this year, as last year was somewhat quiet, and I think it’s fairly public knowledge that there were some issues, so some telcos slowed down their rollout until they could sort those issues out. At the beginning of this year, we are super optimistic, and that we shall see in time,” Walters added.
Last year, EdgePoint expanded its geographical presence in the Visayas and Mindanao and in Palawan, continuing to fill in the lack of telco towers down South.
“It’s like this. Smart sold their towers in two tranches,” the EdgePoint executive explained. “The first tranche was mostly in Luzon and Metro Manila, while the second tranche was mostly in the Visayas and Mindanao. Smart sold a lot of towers to one of our competitors in Mindanao, and they sort of sensibly split their geographical presence into two regions. They’ve got a northern region and a southern region where they operate, and EdgePoint’s footprint is mostly within Luzon and Metro Manila down South.”
“In places where we have a small number of towers, we will strengthen our portfolio to make commercial sense of the business,” Walters said. “The case of Palawan’s a good example. We only have two towers there, which technically doesn’t really make much sense, but our vision is that we will expand within Palawan until we have a viable footprint of say, 50 to 100 towers. It now becomes a question of getting into those markets and then making sense of that decision from an economic point of view moving forward.”
In 2023, EdgePoint Philippines successfully deployed five solar sites, resulting in less carbon emissions and long-term savings on diesel fuel typically used in generating sets that power towers. The decision to go solar has also given rise to a potential revenuegenerating undertaking whose viability the company is seriously weighing.
“It’s important for us to operate efficiently, and we’ve gone solar on some initial sites because we love solar. We’re going to try to up about 15 solar sites this year,” Walters said. “Over the past year, I talked a bit about how we can turn going solar into a new revenue stream for us. Obviously it has to be a revenue stream that also makes sense to the operators. You know, if ultimately it’s more expensive to deploy solar, no matter how much ESG people want to achieve, they won’t be able to do it in scale if it won’t make economic sense. So there has to be that balance.”
Everybody wants to do it from an ESG perspective. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who would contend, “Oh, no solar bad, right?” But it has to reach that tipping point where it makes sense commercially and I think luckily, we have a model where we can now show that it can be cheaper to deploy solar. And then the only challenge left is, is there enough space to put solar in the tower premises?
Outlook for 2024
“Our target is to try and build as many sites as we can,” Walters said. “As I have said, we will continue to strengthen our portfolio because the more towers you have, the more it makes economic sense.
EdgePoint is in partnership with mobile network operators (MNOs) in the Philippines and exploring potential volume commitment-based commercial offerings.
“A lot of us in EdgePoint have been in this business for a long time,” said Walters. “So I think generally, it’s all about partnering, really being a partner rather than a vendor with the customer. It’s about engaging every customer closely.
The tower provider also looks at what could be a volume commitment-based initiative where the company can move quickly while maintaining good operational performance.
Walters talked a lot about commitment because it is really the value that they bring to the industry. So they’re talking to some operators about whether it would make sense that they operate in locations where equipment is on their site because, basically, there’s “more synergies in that.”
“We believe we’re better at managing their equipment because it’s our core business, right?” said Walters. “I mean, that’s what we do, whereas a telco operator is more concerned with things like quality of service and how their electronics are working and all that kind of stuff we are. We are more into access and access control to keep the power on, to keep the lights on. That’s what we do. You know, that’s our job.”
Connectivity for communities project
“We talk about how connectivity is very important, and now we need to walk the talk, and we are talking about underserved areas, underserved people, and people without access to connectivity,” said Walters. “So we walked the talk and invested a bit and worked with Smart, in their outreach programs.”
Regarding expansions, EdgePoint said they will do more from a CSR perspective. The company would like to engage with more communities in building four more classrooms or schools because they have started to do those kinds of CSR projects in partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
“We understand there are challenges, especially for the lowincome people in rural areas who can’t afford to spend so much on their mobile plans,” Walters said. “In Malaysia, telco operators offer cheaper mobile plans available to the underprivileged living within the range of a tower.
“Now, could we as infrastructure builders supply infrastructure that makes commercial sense in areas where maybe the income is lower or there are less potential subscribers? What infrastructure solutions can we supply?” said Walters. “This is one of the reasons we want to work with the government in developing a business model that makes sense to all stakeholders, and it would probably need some kind of funding support as well.”