What It Means
- The PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing agreement lets PLDT, Smart, and DITO trade tower access, indoor network space, and submarine cable capacity at no cost to each other.
- Globe Telecom is not part of the deal, which means two of the country’s three national carriers now build networks cheaper than the third.
- Independent tower companies that lease space to multiple carriers in overlapping areas lose ground the moment two of their biggest clients start swapping sites directly instead of paying rent.
- The agreement was framed as an industry-wide gesture of cooperation, but its terms only bind two of the three signatories against a market where Globe still pays full price.
PLDT, Smart, and DITO Telecommunity signed a memorandum of understanding on July 2 for a PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing deal covering three areas: tower sites, in-building network equipment, and submarine cable capacity. No money changes hands. Each side simply grants the other access to what it already built. Read the joint statement and it sounds like an industry stepping back from wasteful competition. Read the signatory list and the PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing agreement looks like something narrower: a cost deal between two specific companies that leaves a third carrier standing outside it.
Three Cost Centers Inside the PLDT DITO Infrastructure Sharing Deal
The scope of the PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing deal explains why it matters more than the press release lets on. Under the reciprocal macro site arrangement, the three grant each other rights to use eligible tower sites rather than each building a separate structure in the same location. The in-building solution component lets them share equipment inside malls, office towers, and other commercial buildings where wiring multiple separate systems eats into a landlord’s tolerance and a carrier’s budget. The submarine cable piece works through Indefeasible Right of Use arrangements, letting each side use existing international capacity instead of buying new undersea links.
Every one of these is a real, recurring cost line for a telecom operator. Towers require land leases, structural permits, and maintenance contracts. In-building systems require negotiated access with property owners, sometimes exclusive ones. Submarine cable capacity is priced in decades-long contracts that run into the tens of millions of dollars. The PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing agreement converts all three from a paid market transaction into a barter between named parties, and barter only benefits the parties named in it.
DITO Gets a Rival’s Cooperation It Never Had Before
This is the detail worth sitting with. DITO Telecommunity entered the Philippine market in 2021 as the state-backed third player meant to break the PLDT-Globe duopoly, building alone against two incumbents with decades of tower and cable infrastructure already sunk into the ground. The PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing deal is DITO’s first with a rival mobile operator. That single fact changes DITO’s cost position more than any subscriber growth number the company has reported this year.
DITO now gets to plug into PLDT and Smart tower sites in areas where it would otherwise need years and hundreds of millions of pesos to build from scratch. PLDT and Smart, in turn, get access to DITO’s newer 5G-ready sites without paying DITO a lease fee. Both sides win on paper. But only two sides are on the paper.
Globe Absorbs a Cost Nobody Is Discussing
Globe Telecom is not a signatory to the PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing deal. None of the coverage explains why, and nothing here implies exclusion was deliberate retaliation or industry politics. What matters is the arithmetic that follows from the fact itself. Every peso PLDT and DITO save by swapping tower access instead of building or leasing separately is a peso Globe still has to spend the old way, through its own capital budget or its own commercial lease negotiations.
Telecom margins in the Philippines are already thin. Average revenue per subscriber has stayed flat for years while 5G buildout costs keep climbing, the exact pressure both companies cited as the reason for the deal. If falling revenue per user and rising infrastructure cost are squeezing all three national carriers equally, a cost advantage available to two of them and not the third is a structural gap in unit economics that compounds every quarter the arrangement runs.
Tower Companies Lose the Argument They Used to Win
Independent tower companies built their business model on a simple pitch: carriers do not want to build and maintain towers themselves, so they lease space from a neutral third party instead. That pitch worked because carriers had no reason to cooperate with direct competitors on shared infrastructure. The PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing deal removes that reason for two of the three national operators, at least where their networks overlap.
A towerco negotiating a lease renewal with PLDT or DITO in an overlap zone is no longer negotiating against the cost of a rival building its own site. It is negotiating against a real, signed alternative: getting the same access from that rival for free. That is a weaker position than these companies held a week ago, and it did not need a new regulation or announcement to happen. It happened through a private contract most tower lease negotiators will not see clearly until the next renewal cycle.
The Gap Widens Before Anyone Names It
Manuel Pangilinan called this partnership modest at the signing. That framing may hold for the announcement itself, since this is a memorandum of understanding and not yet a site-by-site rollout with a fixed timeline. Modest paperwork can still produce a real cost gap between the companies the PLDT DITO infrastructure sharing deal binds and the company it leaves outside. Two carriers will spend less to expand coverage than the third. Independent tower operators will find their pitch weaker at the next lease renewal in a shared footprint. Neither outcome needed a press conference to start moving. Both were already in motion the moment three signatures went on the same page and a fourth name did not.
Stay ahead of the cost structures, capital flows, and market recalibrations that shape Philippine business in Business & Money section of Hemos PH.
