When People with Good Intentions Make Poor Decisions Out of Ignorance
November 1st, 2010 by sita Posted in church cell tower, lease buyouts, Rooftop cell sites | 2 Comments »A gentleman contacted me this past week, a bit upset in that his church board had decided to sell a cell site lease to Wireless Capital Partners. The Board had heard the pitch from the lease buyout company and was persuaded by Wireless Capital’s pitch that they would market the site to other carriers and get additional tenants to use the property. The gentleman had pleaded with his church board to use our services or at least consider the alternatives, but they directed him to “let it rest”. In this case, this was a bad decision by the church board on many fronts, and they will end up paying for their ignorance many times over.
So why was this decision so bad?
The main reason the church believed this deal was a good one was because Wireless Capital had suggested they would market the location and get additional revenue. In exchange, Wireless Capital Partners would receive 50% of any revenue for additional users. The church’s rationale was that if WCP was successful at getting 2 new tenants on the site, they would be in the same position as if they got one on their own. Suppose that each lease was paying $1000/mo. That means that Wireless Capital would get $1000/mo for two leases and the church would get $1000/mo for two leases. Over 20 years, the church would give up $322,444 in lease income that they would have received 100% of had they not entered the deal with WCP.
The Church assumed incorrectly that there hadn’t been greater interest in their location from other carriers because of a lack of marketing. In fairness, this is a common assertion that we hear from landowners who feel that they aren’t marketing their property effectively. However, this ignores the fact that the carriers choose where they want to place their equipment, and then they send site acquisition agents to the area directly to find the most suitable property. We know this because we provided site acquisition services to carriers like T-Mobile and Nextel for years. Not once did we ever look at a list from Wireless Capital Partners or similar firms to see what sites they were marketing. There was no reason to because we always approached the landowner directly first. ALWAYS.
Even assuming that a lease buyout firm could get to the carriers directly and could convince them to look at their marketing list, the carriers don’t decide which site to use based upon price unless all other factors are equal. Meaning that if your steeple is taller than other rooftops, site acquisition agents will approach you regardless of whether your site is on a list. And if your rooftop is the same as other rooftops in the area, the site acquisition agents might even avoid your site so as not to have to negotiate with landowner representative. When I did work for T-Mobile, we were advised to avoid working with one specific site management company because the process was always longer and the cost always higher than going to a competitive building without a site manager. (See Marketing your Cell Site for more information)
To further compound matters, I question whether Wireless Capital Partners even has the resources to market the property. In 2008, Wireless Capital Partners shut their doors to purchasing new leases. This is the first purchase offer from Wireless Capital that we have seen in 2 years. Many landowners who were in negotiations with Wireless Capital Partners in 2008 thought they had a deal only to have Wireless Capital Partners try to re-trade the deal and then back out altogether. In 2008, Wireless Capital Partners went from 200 staff members to a skeleton crew. I suggested to the gentleman who called me that the church board ask WCP how many people they have on staff whose sole job was to market sites to the carriers. The board rebuffed this request.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: A week after I posted this, I received a friendly note from the President of WCP. He forwarded a press release from Nov 10, 2010 that they have acquired $327 million in capital. I also heard from an associate that they have been reaching out in the industry looking to hire a sales staff. It appears that WCP may be back in business. I can’t tell at this time whether any members of their sales staff will be focused solely on marketing acquired properties to wireless carriers.)
I understand that some landowners may still find value in marketing of their property despite our recommendations otherwise. Even then, there are other lease buyout firms that will purchase your lease at competitive rates to Wireless Capital and market the property for 20% of the future revenue – not 50%. We strongly suggest to any landowner considering a lease buyout to get multiple offers. You wouldn’t consider selling your house to the first person that walks in the door, accepting their terms and conditions. You would list the home, get multiple offers, and compare them to determine which was best for your situation. Why did this particular church accept this offer? I am sure they thought they were doing what they felt was best, but unfortunately, they didn’t know that there were better offers out there.
If you are in this same situation and have been contacted by Wireless Capital Partners or another lease buyout company to purchase your lease, please see our Cell Tower Lease Buyouts page. We can either be retained on a consulting basis to help you figure out whether it makes sense to sell your lease, and if so, to whom. Alternatively, if you are simply interested in seeing what other lease buyout firms will offer for your property, both in terms of lump sum and marketing percentages, we are happy to solicit additional offers for you at no cost to you.
Cell Tower and Cell Site Location Data: A Primer
November 24th, 2007 by admin Posted in cell sites, cell tower locations, cell towers, Rooftop cell sites, tower maps | No Comments »
CELL SITE VS CELL TOWER
Many people make the mistake of comparing “cell sites” and “cell towers”. I regularly receive inquiries from people who say they have a “cell tower” on their roof. What they actually mean to say with rare exception is that they have a “cell site” or cellular antenna site on their rooftop. A “cell site” is simply the antenna installation. A “cell tower” is the support structure upon which a single or multiple “cell sites” are installed. “Cell sites” can also be installed on rooftops, water towers, billboards, signs, hillsides, ect. (In rare cases, there are cell towers installed on top of rooftops.)
1. Rawland: A proposed site for a new tower which will accommodate multiple “cell sites” or “collocations”.
3. Tenant Improvements: The improvement of an existing structure other than a tower. This can be a water tower, a building rooftop installation, or any other non-tower structure.
It is difficult to estimate the number of cell sites in existence. In a few previous posts, we have indicated the number of cell towers owned by the top 20 towers companies (as ranked by RCR who does a yearly informal and somewhat inaccurate poll), our article on estimates of the total number of cell sites owned by each carrier, and estimates of the number of towers owned by each wireless carrier.
COMPLETENESS OF TOWER DATA
To start with, there are no comprehensive tower databases that I am aware of, including Steel in the Air’s. We are contacted on a weekly basis by individuals looking to procure “cell tower” data. However, most of these people are actually looking for “cell site” data. They don’t need to know where towers are but instead want to know where each carrier has their sites. There are multiple reasons why they want to know:
1. Location Based Services (LBS): The wireless carriers are required by the FCC to be able to Enhanced 911 (e911) services for wireless devices which enables emergency providers to locate cellular handsets with a moderate degree of accuracy. Many entrepreneurs desire to use “cell site” locations and coordinates to establish locations for their wireless service. From the location of an individual cellular provider’s cell towers and cell sites, these entrepreneurs intend to triangulate their service’s user’s locations. Unfortunately, we are not aware of any commercially available service whereby this data can be purchased or is otherwise available except through from each individual carrier.
PUBLICLY AVAILABLE DATA
Many of the available online sources of tower data simply regurgitate the records available from the FCC. Please note that there is no requirement by the FCC or any other government agency to register individual “cell sites”. Cellular service is licensed by the region, meaning that the FCC grants the wireless carriers a general license for a county or other geographic region. As long as they conform to the frequency and power limitations of these licenses, they can build anywhere (with local zoning approval).
There are numerous types of data available from the FCC for antenna sites. However, these online sources do not distinguish between what the datasets provide. This appears to create a good deal of confusion between users. Below are some of the datasets provided by the FCC.
1. Antenna Structure Registrations. (ASR) Many of the free online sites for tower data use this as the base data. (Antenna Search.com, Cell Reception.com) Antenna Structure Registration is required by the FCC for those tower sites that pose a threat to air safety. In short, this means towers that are over 200’ tall or those towers that are within 5 miles of an airport. Accordingly, if a tower is under 200’ and is not within 5 miles of an airport, it does not have to be registered with the FCC. (For a indication of how many towers exceed 200′ tall- see our previous post on cell tower heights.) It is important to note that ASRs are only necessary for towers- not cell sites. Oftentimes, the owner of the antenna structure or “cell tower” is not the wireless carrier, it is a tower company who built the tower or a tower aggregator like American Tower or Crown Castle who purchased the tower sites from the wireless carriers. To complicate matters, many of the FCC ASRs are not actually used for cellular communications. They can be two way radio towers or broadcast towers or other wireless internet service towers. There are approximately 110,000 antenna structure registrations.
In essence, if you use the free services that regurgitate the FCC data, recognize that you are getting what you paid for. I personally would not waste my money on any service that offers to sell you the FCC data. (It is available for free from other online sites and can be downloaded from the FCC website for free, although the translation of the database is not simple.)
We have assembled a comprehensive database of tower and cell site locations from numerous sources, including the public FCC data, FAA data, and tower companies that provide their data online. We also have represented over 1000 clients with cell site leases for a few thousand cell sites. For many of those clients, they helped fill in missing data in their area by driving around. In addition, we have independently gathered specific cell site from various sources including paying people to literally drive areas of interest and visually identify towers. Some of our data includes lease rate data, most of it doesn’t. We use our data to assist our clients with determining where cell sites are. In a number of cases, we don’t have complete cell site data for an area. However, we know how to “fill in the holes” and how to assess areas for existing cell sites. In short, we make it our business to collect cell tower and cell site data and create tower location maps. We don’t simply regurgitate free government data.
Cell Tower Health – American Cancer Society Summary of Research
July 4th, 2007 by admin Posted in cell towers, health risks, radiofrequency emissions, Rooftop cell sites | 2 Comments »
At Steel in the Air, Inc., we are constantly bombarded with questions about the issue of the safety of cell towers and the radio frequency emissions from them. Our answer is that we are not qualified to answer the question of whether cell towers are a health risk. We do point out that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits local communities from evaluating health risks as part of a decision on whether to approve or deny a cell tower in a zoning hearing. In fact, if it becomes apparent that a cell tower was denied on the basis of health risks, the decision can be overturned on appeal.
Global Tower Partners acquired by Private Equity
July 3rd, 2007 by admin Posted in cell tower ground lease, global tower partners, Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group, Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, Rooftop cell sites | No Comments »Global Tower Partners announced their acquisition to a consortium led by Macquarie Infrastructure Partners and Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group. A quick search for Macquarie finds that they created the entities last year to fund investments in infrastructure.
From their website, it appears that Macquarie currently controls:
Broadcast Australia is Australia’s leading independent broadcast transmission provider.
Arqiva has a global broadcast, media and mobile communications capability.
National Grid Wireless was recently acquired by Arqiva.
Airwave is the primary provider of secure communications to Britain’s emergency services.
It appears that Macquarie will keep the current management intact, which we believe is a good thing. GTP, through Mark Ganzi and associates, has experienced excellent growth. GTP controls 4500 or so rooftops for wireless use. Given Ganzi’s background with Apex Site Management (one of the original rooftop management companies that was acquired by Spectrasite), we surmise that he understands the value of rooftops far better than many people in the industry.
We have heard that GTP is actively purchasing rooftop leases. If you compare the purchase multiples paid for rooftop cell site leases vs those paid for towers, it seems like a great strategy assuming that GTP is purchasing the rights to the entire rooftops.