Business Times - 07 Jun 2001

Heshe in carrier-hotel venture with US' Geo

Also in tie-up are Sim Lian Group, Top Land and Teck Heng Long Developments

By
Trina Foo

SINGAPORE company Heshe Holdings announced yesterday that it has entered into two joint ventures to build and operate a carrier hotel, a building designed to house network equipment and servers belonging to different communication carrier companies.

It will team up with a group of Singapore companies in one venture, and, in the other, with Delaware-based Geographic Network Affiliates-International Inc (Geo).

In the first venture, Sesdaq-listed Heshe owns 50 per cent of the joint venture company Tele-Hinterland. Its Singapore partners Sim Lian Group, Top Land and Teck Heng Long Developments hold 30 per cent, 18 per cent and 2 per cent respectively. Tele-Hinterland will then enter into another joint venture with Geo, to form Geo-Tele Heartland, which will be one-third owned by Geo and two-thirds by Tele-Hinterland.

Ed Fantegrossi, chairman of Geo, said that the carrier hotel was in line with Geo's expansion plans into this region, following deregulation of Singapore's telecommunications market. Geo is a real estate development and telecommunications services company that builds carrier hotels.

Chia Shi Teck, executive chairman of Heshe, said that the opportunities presented by this venture give Geo-Tele the chance to expand into Asia, starting from Singapore, into China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. He said: '(Tele-Hinterland) can help Geo in this part of the world with our contacts. We are the value-added partner. Geo brings technology and tenants, and we provide local context and real estate expertise.'

Communication carrier companies lease space in the same carrier hotel so that they can easily interconnect their respective networks to create a network exchange point, or a network peering point. Heshe plans to sell its building in Tai Seng Drive to Geo-Tele for $40 million, convert it into a carrier hotel and lease the facilities to tenants.

Mr Fantegrossi said that there are two interested parties. Mr Chia added that he was confident that once an anchor tenant was found, others would come forward. The 200,000 sq ft facility will be ready six months after the lease is signed, before the end of this year.



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