PhilTower announces full operation of 250 VisMin towers turned over by Globe

Phil-Tower Consortium Inc. (PhilTower), the country’s leading Towerco, has announced full operation of towers taken over from Globe in February 2023, scoring a quick turnaround.

This development showcases PhilTower’s organizational readiness and capabilities in completing all processes and requirements to run autonomous end-to-end operations in full compliance with Globe requirements and standards after the asset turnover.

PhilTower and Globe in September signed a sale and leaseback deal for the acquisition of 1,350 Globe sites, with the first batch of 578 towers turned over in February 2023. In just five months, the PhilTower Operations team, under the leadership of its COO PT Pawar, was able to establish two regional operational centers and ramped up resources to ensure a smooth transition. PhilTower is currently operating towers in 17 major islands of Visayas and Mindanao, covering most of the provinces.

Devid Gubiani, CEO of PhilTower, said, “This is yet another big milestone for us of full operational handover of towers from Globe. PhilTower believes in its organizational pillars such as people, process, technology readiness and a faster way of asset management to achieve takeover in a short span of time. We have ensured smooth transition through detailed planning, performing drone audits, setting up regional offices and resources and onboarding existing Globe O&M and security partners. We look forward to extending further operational savings to Globe from the establishment of the 24/7 operational capability and distributed field operations teams in the challenging territories of Visayas and Mindanao.”

PT Pawar, COO of PhilTower, said “The faster and smooth transitioning is achieved through setting up PhilTower’s transitioning project management office of key experts, internal workstreams, outsourcing of field activities and management support for critical decision alignment. The focus on day one digitalization of site audits, proactive planning and execution helped us to complete handover requirements like deployment of electronic locks, RMS, establishing centralized Tower Operation Centre for 24/7 manning at BGC, field workforce management tool and KPI monitoring processes. We appreciate the valuable inputs and support of Globe teams during transitioning, handholding and now, start of standalone operation. PhilTower will ensure post transitioning improvement of network availability.”

Ernest Cu, Globe Group President and CEO, congratulated PhilTower for the fast turnaround, saying: “We are happy to hear that the first batch of towers we turned over to PhilTower are now fully operational after just five months. This speaks of the smooth transition between the two companies. This level of efficiency is crucial in ensuring undisrupted services to our customers.”

Globe is looking forward to PhilTower’s operationalization of the other towers covered by the sale and leaseback deal.