Private equity firm KKR based in the United States has bared its investment in Pinnacle Towers Pte. Ltd., banking on the Philippine government’s push for the shared tower market.
Pinnacle entered the common tower market through its subsidiary Frontier Tower Associates Philippines Inc. (FTAP), which secured a go signal from the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to operate as an independent tower company (ITC).
“The telecommunications sector in the Philippines has grown rapidly in the past few years amid the increasing demand for connectivity. This has led to a resource imbalance and the need to expand existing infrastructure to allow operators to provide better service and coverage to their customers,” David Luboff, partner and head of Asia-Pacific Infrastructure at KKR, said in a statement.
“Our investment in Pinnacle reiterates our commitment to addressing this need and supporting the Philippines’ transition to a connected, digital nation. We look forward to assisting the Pinnacle team to deliver the benefits of a more digitally enabled economy to the Filipino people, especially in growing regions such as the Visayas and Mindanao,” he added.
This marked KKR’s second infrastructure investment in the country. Details of its investment in Pinnacle, however, were not disclosed.
More than two years after the government planned out the common tower project, the DICT on September 15 issued provisional ITC certificates of registration for 23 firms that have already secured deals with the former.
Among the tower companies are Aboitiz Infracapital Inc., Acoda Towers SDN Bhd, Alt-Global-Solutions Inc., Transcend Towers Infrastructure (Philippines), Inc., China Construction First Group Corp. and Wingan Construction and Development Corp., China Construction Yangtze River (M) SDN BHD, China Energy Equipment Co., Ltd, CREI Management Services FZE, Desarrollos Terrestres Inc., EEI Corp., Frontier Tower Associates Philippines, Inc., and IHS Holding Ltd.
The certificate, it noted, serves as the provisional authority to own, construct manage, and operate one or more passive telecommunications towers infrastructure.
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