COMMON tower provider Alliance Towers Corp. hopes to bag more contracts with the country’s mobile network operators after a major investment from an Indonesia-based tower company.
“Hopefully (we can build) another 250 (towers) for them,” Alliance Towers President and Chief Operating Officer Alvin D. Tolentino told BusinessWorld in a recent phone interview.
The company is currently committed to build 250 towers for the country’s three major telecommunications companies.
“Of the total, more than a hundred are ongoing,” Mr. Tolentino said.
“These are concentrated in the Visayas and Mindanao, and we also have in South Luzon.”
In July, Indonesia-based tower company Bersama Digital Infrastructure Asia and investment company Opti-Teknology Philippines, Inc. committed to subscribe to new shares in Alliance Towers. Opti-Teknology’s shareholders are the founders of Alliance Towers.
The transaction is targeted to complete in September.
“Bersama Digital and Opti-Teknology will own 51% and 49% of Alliance Towers, respectively,” Tower Bersama Group and Alliance towers said in a joint statement.
“Tower Bersama has organically built over 12,000 of its nearly 21,000 towers in Indonesia, making it one of the world’s leading organic tower builders,” they said.
Mr. Tolentino said Bersama Digital will provide Alliance Towers with long-term technical and financial support.
“At the same time, the creditors will rate us higher, because as Alliance Towers with no track record to show, the banks are quite careful in terms of lending, and our credit rating is not as good, but having a shareholder that has 20 years of experience gives us credibility and makes our financial credit rating higher,” he explained.
The company hopes to expand in tandem with the telecommunications companies such as Globe Telecom, Inc., PLDT, Inc., and DITO Telecommunity Corp.
“From my meetings with all the mobile network operators, they are moving all of their expansions to the common towers because it really makes sense for everybody. It will all result in efficiency, and if it’s efficient then it will result in better quality and cheaper costs for consumers,” Mr. Tolentino added. — Arjay L. Balinbin
