Gov’t still undecided on common tower policy
The government remains undecided on certain provisions, including the highly debated ones, of the country’s first ever common tower policy, but is eager to come out with a final draft within the year.
“We will give our best effort before yearend depending on supplementary inputs from stakeholders to make sure the policy benefits the people and the industry as a whole in the long term,” Information and Communications Technology Sec
retary Gregorio Honasan told The STAR.
Honasan had earlier looked at September or October for the release of a draft of the new policy.
Last Friday, however, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) issued a notice of consultations and submissions for the agency rulemaking on the policy on shared passive ICT infrastructure.
In the notice, the DICT said all stakeholders from the government sector, academe, and relevant industries are given another round to submit their written inputs and comments on the proposed agency rulemaking to refine the proposed policy standards on highly debated issues. “There are highly debated areas of the proposed policy for the sharing of telecommunications towers that may benefit from another round of inputs and observations,” the notice signed by Honasan said.
The original draft common tower policy, which was presented by presidential adviser on economic affairs and information technology communications Ramon Jacinto last year, met oppositions from tower providers, telcos, and other stakeholders as
it tried to limit to a maximum of two the independent tower companies that will be registered in the first four years of the program’s implementation and likewise prohibited telcos from building their own towers unless the tower companies are unable to do so.
In terms of the number of tower companies that will be allowed to operate, the DICT is looking at three options, the first of which is that the the DICT be allowed to register as many independent tower companies as it deems necessary, provided that it will not register no more than seven in the first four years from the effective date of the policy.
The second is a proposal which intends to limit the number of independent tower companies to not more than five in the first four years of policy implementation, with the proposed number later on to be increased to at least seven “to promote the viability of the policy and to ensure highquality rollout consistent with protection of national security.”
Meanwhile, the final option is to allow market forces to determine the number of common tower companies.
To date, 24 tower companies have indicated interest in participating in the government’s common tower initiative.
The DICT, likewise, remained in need of more clarity as to whether or not telcos will be prohibited from building their own towers.
Based on existing proposals, all tower companies must be independent of the mobile network operators (MNOs) and should not directly or indirectly own any equity as promote tower sharing, nondiscriminatory access, and transparency in tower leasing arrangements.