KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, September 10, 2026 – PhilTower, the leading Philippine provider of shared digital and power infrastructure, has joined the GSMA as the first independent TowerCo member from the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The move gives PhilTower a seat in the global industry conversation, where it can bring the realities of Philippine deployment to the table and refine how capital becomes reliable infrastructure at home.
GSMA is a global organisation unifying 700 mobile operators and more than 500 additional companies across the ecosystem to advance innovation and reduce inequalities around the world. PhilTower received its membership certificate during the GSMA Tower Forum “Better Together” Roundtable held in Kuala Lumpur on September 8, ahead of GSMA M360 ASEAN 2026 on September 9-10 attended by PhilTower executives.
PhilTower joins under Industry Membership, for companies that support the mobile ecosystem beyond network operators. It can participate in GSMA working groups and standards activities alongside more than 1,200 member organizations worldwide.
“Operators make expansion decisions site by site,” said Devid Gubiani, President and Chief Executive Officer of PhilTower. “Our aim is to make every site work for them on capacity, cost and sustainability. We want to bring what we have learned in the Philippines to GSMA and bring home ideas that improve how we build, share and manage such critical infrastructure.”
PhilTower operates more than 4,500 towers from Luzon to Mindanao, serving the Philippines’ three mobile network operators: Globe, Smart and DITO.
Powered by PhilTower’s AI-assisted analysis, remote monitoring and digital tower models guide daily operations. Site data helps teams spot faults, deploy field crews, prioritize repairs and plan capacity ahead of demand.
That scalability faces its hardest test in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs), where land, power, permits, access and community confidence determine whether capital becomes a productive asset or a stalled plan. GSMA membership gives PhilTower a forum to compare approaches to energy, resilience, policy and deployment, then apply them in Philippine projects. Where ancestral domains are involved, as in Sagada, PhilTowers works with Indigenous communities, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and local authorities. The Outcome is both commercial and social: more viable network expansion and more dependable connectivity for hard-to-reach communities.
“A tower project depends on land, power, permits and community confidence,” said Kalvin Parpan, Chief Government Communications Officer of PhilTower. “Bringing those requirements together is part of our commitment. Learning from other markets matters when it helps us turn local plans into working sites and more dependable connections.”
Devid Gubiani also serves as President of the Independent Tower Companies’ Association of the Philippines (ITCAP), established in 2026 as a common voice for independent TowerCos. The association focuses on investment, infrastructure sharing, deployment barriers, power and site resilience, and engagement with national agencies, local governments and communities. Through that role, Devid Gubiani can bring Philippine operating realities into GSMA discussions and carry useful international practice back to the local industry.
For the Philippines’ nascent TowerCo industry, that flow of insight matters. It can turn global lessons on site economics, energy and shared infrastructure into better local investment decisions and, over time, more sustainable connectivity.
“Extending coverage requires infrastructure that operators can afford to use and communities can depend on,” said Vivek Badrinath, Director General of the GSMA. “We welcome PhilTower and the experience it brings from the Philippines as members share approaches to network deployment, energy management and digital twin technologies.”
PhilTower will put that exchange to work across its Philippine portfolio. The measure is simple: infrastructure that performs, coverage that reaches farther and connections that hold when people need them.
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