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Tag: tower

  • Philippines publishes common tower rules

    Philippines publishes common tower rules

    The Philippines’ Department of ICT has published the rules and regulations for the new common tower provider regime with the goal of building or converting at least 2,500 common towers across the nation.

    The rules will pave the way for deployments in properties owned by the departments, other government agencies, and hard-to-access areas identified by the market’s mobile operators.

    With the rules, the DICT has committed to streamlining the issue of licenses for the deployment of telecommunications equipment in towers not built by the independent tower companies participating in the scheme.

    They also seek to encourage voluntary sharing of towers by incumbent mobile operators by offering incentives in the form of allowing companies to build passive infrastructure in government properties and to enable operators to offer, transfer and convey existing tower resources to tower sharing entities.

    Independent tower companies participating in the scheme will need to be at least 20% owned or in a consortium with companies with at least five years of experience constructing, owning, operating and/or maintaining towers.

    They must also be wholly independent of mobile operators to ensure they offer non-discriminatory access and have reached agreements with the DICT and secured the required permits.

    The DICT said that to date 22 tower companies have signed memoranda of understanding with the department over the common tower initiative.

    “This is the starting point of more comprehensive policy for our initiative on passive infrastructure sharing. This will help tower firms to acquaint themselves in our telco industry,” DICT acting secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr. said.

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  • Tower Records Tokyo chooses vinyl

    Tower Records Tokyo chooses vinyl

    The Tower Records Tokyo store in Shinjuku is cashing in on the Japanese market’s resurgence of interest in vinyl records.

    While Tower has sold records for a long time, the Tower Vinyl brand is seizing on the global vinyl revival that has seen consumers worldwide take a preference to the physical discs, with all the nostalgia they represent, over the more ephemeral and invisible distribution of digital music. The store now holds 70,000 records in stock – the majority of which are second hand.

    The vinyl revival is blossoming just as streaming technology hits a new peak in the territory.

    When the Recording Industry Association of Japan announced that streaming platforms overtook digital downloads last year, however, the association’s conclusions were criticised for failing to take into account any information regarding physical sales of music media and presenting an incomplete picture of Japanese music consumption.

    Vinyl records have been making a major comeback in Japan for some time, with HMV also launching a vinyl-album store in Shibuya in 2014 – having been absent for the district for several years, and now having expanded its operations since that time. Japanese artists have recently been releasing their music on vinyl, and – rather anachronistically – some 90s-era CDs have been reissued on vinyl record.

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  • Axiata to sell 34.1% of tower unit for $600m

    Axiata to sell 34.1% of tower unit for $600m

    Malaysia’s Axiata Group has arranged to sell a 34.1% stake in its wholly-owned telecommunications infrastructure services division edotco Group for $600 million.

    The operator will place $400 million worth of primary shares with Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, and $200 million in secondary shares with Khazana Nasional Berhad.

    The placement is expected to close by the end of January. It values edotco at close to $1.5 billion, with an enterprise value to FY16 ebitda multiple of 12.5x – roughly comparable to the company’s regional peers.

    The valuation takes into account the potential future injection of tower assets from Axiata’s Cambodian and Sri Lankan operations, which would further increase Axiata’s shareholding in edotco.

    “Our lead investors and new shareholders, INCJ and Khazanah, are both long-term investors who will provide strategic value-add to edotco’s growth strategy, open doors to further strategic collaborations, as well as enhance and diversify our shareholder base,” edotco CEO Suresh Sidhu said.

    Axiata CEO Jamaludin Ibrahim added that edotco achieved a comparatively strong valuation during the placement due to its robust recent business growth.

    “We are determined to make edotco a world-class business and one of the world’s largest independent tower companies by 2020. The successful placement exercise is yet another step – financially and symbolically – towards facilitating this aspiration.”

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  • XL Axiata to sell more telecom towers for $250m

    XL Axiata to sell more telecom towers for $250m

    Indonesia’s XL Axiata has arranged to sell 2,500 more telecom towers for 3.56 trillion rupiah ($250 million) as part of an ongoing asset management reorgnization.

    XL has agreed to sell the towers to local tower operator Professional Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Protelindo) and rent most of them back for 10 years as the anchor tenant.

    Announcing the move, XL said it expects to benefit from significant capex and opex savings, and plans to use proceeds from the sale to help further reduce its debt.

    The operator is also expected to use the divestment to help more aggressively roll out 4G services.

    XL already sold 3,500 towers to PT Solusi Tunas Pratama (SUPR) as part of a deal arranged during 2014, and used the proceeds to reduce its debt burden.

    In related news, credit ratings agency Moody’s has recently published a report predicting that telecom tower companies in Indonesia as well as India are well-placed to continue growing.

    Tower companies in the two markets are the most developed in Asia, Moody’s said. But the company noted that geographical, operational and regulatory differences between the two countries will affect their growth rates and financial performance.

    “We expect continued growth in both markets as mobile operators, building out and strengthening their third- and fourth-generation (3G and 4G) footprints, will seek to lease tower space and sell more of their own towers,” Moody’s assistant vice president and analyst Nidhi Dhruv said.

    “In this context, we expect overall year-on-year revenue growth of about 8%-10% for tower operators in both countries during the next one to two years.”

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