TowerXchange is committed to encouraging and enabling diversity across the telecommunications infrastructure industry. As part of our ongoing work in the tower community, we are pleased to profile some of the most senior women in Asian towers. Women in Towers is a live project and we will be updating it regularly, as well as adding content for the other regions we serve. We have been delighted with the industry response to this project and hope to together inspire the next generation of female leaders! If you’d like to be considered for this feature, or to nominate a colleague, please email me at cliu@towerxchange.com
edotco Group: Rema Devi Nair, Regulatory Advisor to CEO (Malaysia)
Please tell us about your background and current role within your company
A 28-year participant of the telecoms industry, my career in this exciting industry started in corporate planning and strategy at Telekom Malaysia and my specialisation evolved over time to regulation and public policy. After eight years, I joined the newly established Malaysian convergence regulator (the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) in 1998, focussing primarily on economic regulation.
After a four-year stint as a regulator, I accepted an invitation in 2003, to set up and head the regulatory management function at TM International, a regional role that involved managing regulatory risk and public policy advocacy across selected markets in the South East Asia and South Asia region. This role seamlessly transitioned to that of Head, Group Regulatory Affairs at Axiata Group, following the demerger of TM’s domestic and international businesses. This was a position that I held for nine years until 2012, key highlights of which included a four-term stint on the Chief Regulatory Officer’s Group of the GSMA and frequent speaking engagements on regulatory issues at regional and global fora.
After a short career break, I embarked on my current position as Regulatory Advisor to the CEO at edotco Group in mid-2014, an advisory role which involves providing guidance and oversight to the Group’s regulatory team. I am also a Board Member of selected national towercos within the edotco Group.
How did you enter the telecom infrastructure industry? And how have things changed since then?
As mentioned, my entry into the telecom infrastructure industry came through earlier roles in the fixed and mobile parts of the business, as well as specialisation in the regulatory management function. In fact, I would say that I have spent virtually my entire career in the telecoms infrastructure industry, given how key infrastructure is as the backbone of the telecom industry. However, it is only in the last four years that my regulatory focus has been on network facilities and infrastructure, primarily in relation to towers and passive infrastructure.
Four developments come to mind when I consider how things have changed in the telecom infrastructure industry over time:
- First is the emergence of independent telecom tower companies, which have grown in a short span of 20 years to become a new infrastructure asset class of its own, estimated at some US$300bn (TowerXchange estimate).
- Secondly, traditional infrastructure players aside, major internet players have begun investing heavily in connectivity infrastructure in core, radio access and even the last mile. Examples are Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project, Google’s Google Fiber, Cloud and Loon, and Microsoft’s MAREA.
- Thirdly, passive infrastructure is becoming increasingly important for capacity purposes rather than coverage, especially given the need for high speed broadband delivery. Correspondingly, telecom infrastructure in the tower space is evolving from traditional ground-based structures to smaller, more innovative structures that can be more densely placed but are capable of delivering high speeds.
- Fourthly, regulatory regimes in most markets have evolved so as to enable the licensing of pure-play facilities and infrastructure players. Accordingly, regulatory policies on infrastructure sharing have moved from being mobile operator-centric to being infrastructure-focussed, emphasising access to towers on commercial basis and minimising duplication.
What has been the greatest achievement in your career so far?
By its very nature, much of regulatory management is undertaken through the purview of written submissions and direct engagement with regulators.
Against this background, I believe the greatest achievement in my career thus far has been bringing fact and evidence-based approaches to the regulatory management function, as well as advocating exemplar and best practice approaches across emerging markets. The infrastructure industry in particular, warrants light touch regulation, which is the position edotco advocates across our markets.
And looking ahead, what is your greatest professional ambition?
I believe that I am at that point in my career where I am well placed to use my knowledge and experience to bring value through membership on company boards, especially in highly regulated industries. Whether from the perspective of strategy, risk assessment, compliance or governance, I believe a role either as independent or non-independent director would be my professional direction looking ahead.
Protelindo: Anita Anwar, Head of Property Management Division (Indonesia)
Please tell us about your background and current role within your company
I have been involved in the telecom sector since 2006 when Nokia Siemens started one of its pilot projects being a managed service provider for Hutchison 3 Indonesia. At Nokia Siemens I started as a Site Acquisition Negotiator and was later promoted to be a Business Operation Manager managing day-to-day site access, land leases, power management and third-party relations.
In 2010 I felt the need to enhance my technical knowledge and was given an opportunity to be a Project Manager of CME Managed Service project for Protelindo. This entailed running the project end-to-end and involved in preventive and corrective maintenance, contractor management, with an ambitious operating target. We successfully ran this project for three years with the highest level of quality, resulting in yearly contract extension from Protelindo.
In 2012, having worked closely with Protelindo, I was offered the opportunity to join them as Head of The Property Management Division taking on responsibility to restructure the team and to streamline processes in order to meet the ambitious target to renew our massive land leases portfolio. This role includes costs management associated with rent, rates and all matters associated with property management of the physical infrastructure.
What has been the greatest achievement in your career so far?
To date, my teams and I have managed to renew more than 8,000 land leases at market-standard-rates in an extremely efficient manner. This experience has thus far been my greatest professional achievement.
And looking ahead, what is your greatest professional ambition?
I enjoy being part of highly motivated team that continuously looks for ways and strategies to improve.
OCK Group Berhad, Hillary Chua, Group CFO (Malaysia)
Please tell us about your background and current role within your company
I am the current Group CFO of OCK Group Berhad, heading the finance function with a portfolio of 42 companies in seven ASEAN countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, China and Singapore.
I joined OCK in July 2016, when the company started to ramp-up its tower business growth trajectory. Since then, OCK has grown from owning approximately 150 towers in Malaysia to approximately 2,980 towers in Vietnam, Myanmar and Malaysia. Two major initiatives in OCK contributed to the exponential growth: firstly from the successful rollout of new towers in Myanmar throughout mid-2016, which increased OCK’s tower ownership in Myanmar to over 766 towers. With the largest acquisition in OCK’s history in January 2017, OCK now owns 1,988 towers in Vietnam through the acquisition of Southeast Asia Telecommunications Holdings Pte. Ltd. (SEATH).
Leading the finance division of this exponential growth company, my key focus involves corporate M&A activities, capital management, forex management and cash flow management. Together with an overview of finance, treasury, taxation, and procurement functions in OCK, I played a pivotal role in OCK’s second major initiative (Vietnam Acquisition), in the areas of due diligence, valuation, both Bursa and Bank Negara’s compliance requirements, and the subsequent business combination into OCK Group. Under my care, OCK has successfully completed funding initiatives totaling US$70mn.
I have over 18 years of business and financial management experience in various organizations in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, and am a qualified Australian CPA and member of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants. I started her career with PwC in the area of auditing and business assurance, and later moved on to the financial services industry with American Express International and Citibank.
How did you enter the telecom infrastructure industry? And how have things changed since then?
My first entry into the telecommunications industry was with Maxis (one of the largest telecommunications in Malaysia at the time) to head the budgeting and forecast of the Consumer Mobile business in 2008. This was during the telecommunications industry boom time in Malaysia, where MNOs were all still enjoying 45-50% EBITDA margin. Subsequently, as the mobile penetration started to peak and subscribers’ growth plateaued, I saw opportunities to grow in the telecommunications infrastructure industry. Seeking to broaden my scope to be at the forefront of technology, I joined Axiata’s Group Strategy and Analysis Division, looking mainly into 4G LTE and the Digital business.
With flat growth and margin erosion for the MNOs, they are bound to look into cost rationalization for their network. MNOs will start to look for partnership opportunities with tower operators for lower network operating cost. In addition, in-line with the global trend, MNOs are also looking at new business strategy. Gone are the days where network coverage is crucial, and MNOs are now mainly competing on customer service and customers’ experience level. Hence, MNOs would prefer to focus their resources on advertising and marketing, better product packages and improved customer service/call centres, rather than on passive network maintenance and roll-out issues.
The general trend is that MNOs are more open about tower sharing as part of cost savings measure in maintaining a nationwide coverage.
In my view the ASEAN tower infrastructure industry can be categorized into two markets: the “mature” towerco market; and the “frontier” markets where mobile penetrations are below or near the 100% mark.
In mature markets such as Indonesia and Vietnam, there will be potential for further consolidation of the smaller towercos. As margin erosion creeps-in, towercos would require a certain level of economies of scale to maintain they profitability, and the smaller towercos will be looking at cashing out. So the M&A space has been quite exciting for OCK, there are a few deals that we are looking into, currently.
In the frontier markets such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, there are still a lot of opportunities for new-build/build-to-suit business models. For these markets the project delivery is key to the business. Towercos would need to support the network roll-out planned by the MNOs; with site accessibility issues for sites located remote reach areas or in civil-war/unstable regions.
What has been the greatest achievement in your career so far?
My greatest achievement so far will be more akin to “flying a plane, while we are building it.” While running OCK’s existing RM400mn business, I also support OCK’s exponential business growth of over 766 towers in Myanmar and the US$50mn acquisition of the largest towerco in Vietnam which currently owns 1,988 towers.
Capital management and cash-flow planning is key for the success of these two major developments in OCK. In this one year, we have successfully completed two major loan drawdowns of approximately US$70mn to fund both projects.
I couldn’t have achieved these without a great team of finance staff, especially a very strong treasury team, and the solid support from my senior leadership team.
And looking ahead, what is your greatest professional ambition?
Moving forward, I hope to continue to create value for the organization, via M&As, external partnership with other towercos and vendors in exploring new business structure for the towerco business in areas of small cells and new businesses beyond passive tower management. All these will align and lead to OCK’s long term plan of raising capital through capital markets.
