Malaysia's edotco, ISOC Infrastructure $10-M joint venture to build telco towers

Malaysia-based edotco Group Sdn. Bhd. and Philippine company ISOC Infrastructure Inc. on Tuesday formalized their partnership with the signing of a joint venture agreement to build and lease out common towers for telcos.

The joint venture company would be called ISOC-edotco Towers Inc.

During the signing ceremony in Makati City, ISOC Chairman Michael Cosiquien said its partnership with edotco was  "an equal partnership," meaning both companies will own 50 percent of the joint venture firm.

"The combined initial equity is $10 million," Cosiquien said.

For his part, edotco Chief Executive Officer Suresh Sidhu said both companies agreed to invest up to $100 million over the next three to five years.

"Roughly that should be the first thousand of the towers as part of the first phase of the plan," Sidhu said.

For the first year of operation, ISOC-edotco was looking at building around 400 to 500 towers.

Cosiquien said the investments for the common tower projects would be financed from internally generated funds of both ISOC and edotco.

In June, the ISOC-edotco group signed a memorandum of understanding with Globe Telecom for the leasing of 150 towers in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon to be built by the tower provider. 

In August, the group also inked an agreement with Smart Communications Inc. to lease out common towers in the initial 71 sites where ISOC-edotco would build cell towers that fit within Smart's network roll-out plan. 

Cosiquien said the ISOC-edotco group was also in talks with third telco Dito Telecommunity for the possible leasing of tower infrastructure.

The government's common tower initiative seeks to free telecommunications companies from costly capital expenditures in building communication towers.

According to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), the draft for the common tower policy was set to be completed in two months' time. — DVM, GMA News