Cell Tower Builds & Wireless Technology

What Makes Cell Towers Competitive?

January 8, 2019 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

Recently, Fierce Wireless ran an article about AT&T’s threat to public tower companies about how “successful” their tower development project with Tillman Infrastructure has been. The article cites a Morgan Stanley report which claims that “On a national basis in a 0.5-mile radius, ~65% of towers have no competitor and just ~15% have more than one competitor. Within a 1-mile radius, ~45% of sites nationally have no competitor and just ~35% have more than one competitor.”

A tower is considered competing when it fulfils the same coverage or capacity goals or both as another nearby tower. Because coverage and capacity goals can vary widely depending upon the terrain, population density and distribution, time of day, difficulty of zoning, and proximity of other existing sites, there is no uniform distance where a tower would be considered as competing with another tower. We regularly assist our tower company clients with evaluating prospective acquisitions to determine how many competing towers are present across the portfolio of target towers. A tower is considered competing if it falls within the same search area or search ring as another tower. It’s not hard to see that the AMT and CCI towers in the photo above are competitive.

However, when looking at large numbers of towers, it isn’t feasible to look at each set of towers and we must make assumptions. As a rule of thumb, we tend to use the following distances for urban, suburban, and rural areas- ¼, ½, and 1 mile. In other words, if a tower is located within ¼ mile of another tower in an urban area, it could compete for the same prospective tenant. Of course, there are situations where that distance could be less or greater. For ease of analysis though, we utilize these distances.

For example, we previously completed an analysis of our proprietary tower data for a large hedge fund. Specifically, we examined each of the public tower companies’ tower datasets and compared to our own tower data. We looked separately at each large public tower company’s exposure to competitive towers in urban, suburban, and rural areas based upon multiple radii. We chose to use urban/suburban/rural designations instead of BTAs. While BTAs are used by the public tower companies as a proxy for urban/suburban/rural, we find that is misleading as BTAs can include urban and suburban and sometimes rural sub-areas in the same BTA.

We also examined each public tower company portfolio individually so that we could see which company was better positioned for rural expansion, urban infill and densification, and suburban expansion and densification. We also looked to see on average how many competing towers each tower company’s urban, suburban and rural towers had within a distance where a wireless carrier could choose one or the other tower.

We found that on average the public tower companies have .2 competing towers for each of their towers within ¼ mile, .4 competing towers within ½ mile, and just over 1 competing tower within 1 mile on a nationwide basis.

Please note that this doesn’t directly contradict Morgan Stanley’s findings as our methodology looks at average number of competing towers per tower while theirs appears to look at the number of towers with any competing towers within a given distance.

Interestingly, the public tower companies have different levels of exposure to competing towers depending upon whether their towers are in urban/suburban/rural areas with some tower companies having more exposure in rural areas and less in urban areas and vice versa. When you examine how each tower company acquired or built their towers, this stands to reason. SBA chose to acquire towers from other tower companies while Crown Castle and American Tower acquired large chunks of their portfolios from wireless carriers and tower companies.

The tower companies have differing exposure to competing towers depending upon where and how they acquired their towers.

Another point of interest is that there are more competing towers within the assumed “competitive” radii than there were 10 years ago across urban, suburban, and rural towers although this is more pronounced in urban areas as should be expected. We examined the number of competing towers in 2007, 2011, and 2017, and found that the number of competing towers had increased between 25% and 50% between 2007 and 2017. This despite more difficult zoning regulations in many areas that would prevent new towers near existing towers.

Our next near-term project will be using this previous analysis to evaluate how many new towers have been proposed or built near existing tower company towers to date- not just by Tillman but by other build-to-relocate (or BTR) developers as well. If you recall from previous articles, some wireless carriers have simply told any tower company that would listen where they would like to move off an existing tower, with the first tower company to have a tower standing being the one they would lease from.

If you are interested in discussing or purchasing any of our findings, please contact us.

DISH’s NB-IOT Network Plans- More than Just a License Saver Design?

November 8, 2018 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

As pointed out by Inside Towers, construction drawings for a DISH NB-IOT installation are available here. We reviewed the drawings carefully and have some observations.

What is DISH installing?

DISH appears to be using one 3' satellite dish for backhaul purposes. The drawings include a designation that a second location must be available on the platform.

DISH is using Ericsson equipment with battery backup.

DISH's equipment and lease area is 5' 3" x 7' 0".

DISH is installing 3 larger tri-band panel antennas made by Comba along with 8 remote radio units. The antennas are being installed as high as possible on this particular 225' tower which makes sense for an NB-IOT installation.

This particular installation is on an SBA tower- we have heard that SBA is getting a sizeable portion of the initial round of DISH installations. We will confirm that later as more requests come in.

What does this mean for tower owners, investors, and landowners?

For tower owners, any new company adding collocations to existing towers is welcome. The collocation amounts to additional revenue, although expectations are tempered because of the lower number of DISH sites that will be deployed initially in an effort to keep their FCC frequency licenses. Private tower owners won't stand to benefit as much as public tower owners- primarily because it appears that DISH is focusing on deploying sites quickly which is best done by a master lease agreement with public tower companies. Because NB-IOT doesn't require the same degree of location specificity as traditional cellular, DISH has more flexibility in terms of optimizing cost and speed as opposed to location. The real question left outstanding is when and if DISH intends to install a full-blown network- which we won't likely know for some time.

For Landowners, unless your ground lease is with a public tower company and it has a revenue share component in it, you won't likely see any additional rent. Some building owners in urban areas may see some limited interest especially on taller buildings.

For Investors, while this is slightly positive to the public tower companies, the initial number of sites isn't significant enough to get excited about. There isn't likely a significant upgrade path for these sites, so amendment activity in the future may be limited. For DISH, it is too early to tell what this means. The site design is indicative that DISH has plans to operate an actual network, but whether DISH actually deploys enough sites to have a robust NB-IOT network remains to be seen.

Small Cell Leasing For Municipal Electric Utilities and Coops After State Small Cell Legislation

August 15, 2018 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation to the Florida Municipal Electric Association, that I reworked here to make it a bit broader and applicable for the majority of cases in the United States.

It is primarily about small cells and considerations that private landowners/exempt public landowners should have when considering small cell leases. Prior to State Small Cell Legislation, it was a bit of the wild west. Wireless service providers or their infrastructure companies were trying to claim that they were utilities, with some going so far as erecting poles overnight without permits. Municipalities and counties were all over the board in their approaches to small cells.

You can find the entire slideshow here. To get a taste of the presentation see the short video and comments below.

Really large pizza boxes

The industry pushed small cell state legislation by making ridiculous and misleading claims like this- that small cells are the size of a “pizza box” all while pushing legislation that allowed them to put 6 cubic feet of equipment on the top of the pole and 28 cubic feet at the base. That’s a lot of pizza boxes.

What happens whet 4-6 wireless companies deploy small cells separately

This graphic shows what happens when multiple companies each seek to deploy their own poles at 200’ apart. While the wireless companies try to paint a very pretty picture of the distance that their small cells can cover, they very carefully omit to share that small cells (especially fixed wireless) are sensitive to line of sight issues and other degradation of signal from foliage and buildings and even weather. To resolve these issues, they overbuild the numbers of sites to address these issues and capacity issues as well.

To see our upper-level recommendations regarding evaluating small cell leasing for public utilities and coops in the wake of state small cell legislation please see the presentation in its entirety.
If you are interested in learning more about these and other recommendations, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Opinion: Stories of small cell application agreements failure between carriers and cities are too often part of the wireless lobby efforts (in the media) to maintain profit margins.

April 11, 2018 by Ken Schmidt 2 Comments

This type of fluff pieces provide no actual statistical data on how most cities treat applications for small cells instead relies upon anecdotal examples from isolated cities. There is no statistical information about how many municipalities “are acting as if they’re 100-foot towers”. No study or other reference proving this oft-stated dictum from the carriers and their lobbyists.

Where the author chooses to cite an actual city with high lease rates for small cells, he fails to acknowledge that the cited lease rates for Newport Beach are historic data from old DAS agreements. Furthermore, he ignores that the wireless providers in CA still have the right to utilize Joint Pole Authority poles from utilities at lower rates. This type of piece suggests that the municipalities alone are restricting the deployment of 5G- and fails to acknowledge that there are actual utility poles available to the wireless carriers that are available at federally prescribed rate schedules. This article also ignores the fact that many times the wireless carriers prefer to install new poles in the ROW because it is cheaper for them not to have to do a structural analysis on an existing pole despite the added impact on residents aesthetically and to the city from a public safety and operational standpoint.

5G isn’t imperiled because of municipalities- its imperiled by wireless carriers desire to maintain 40-50% margins and their concern that such margins may erode without public welfare. It is imperiled by the unwillingness of utilities like the very companies asking for relief to share their poles- either existing ones or new ones. I don’t doubt there are difficult municipalities and those that may be overreaching- but using unsupported platitudes to justify a fluff opinion piece like this is a disservice to the discussion. But then again, that seems to be the wireless industries playbook. Point to the bad actors without providing any substantive data on how many good actors there are.

The main points non-technical reporters get wrong about 5G

March 29, 2018 by Ken Schmidt 1 Comment

I find it fascinating how non-technical reporters (for example An Investor's Primer: 5G, the Internet of Things, and Augmented/Virtual Reality and 5G Wireless Will Redraw the Wireless Industry Map: Who Stands to Lose?) try to simplify 5G and explain it in nearly binary fashion.

So let’s get a few things straight:

1. Stop calling it a “race”.
It isn’t a sprint nor is it a marathon. The better analogy is that 5G is like the Olympics. There will be many winners in many different events and some losers. Some events will end up getting added; some will go away due to lack of popularity. But trying to simplify 5G as if it is just a single race demonstrates a lack of understanding of the complexity and sophistication of the 5G protocols.

2. 5G at its core isn’t sexy- so stop trying to make it so.
The wireless industry likes to make 5G exciting and futuristic by glorifying things like self-driving cars and wireless virtual reality and remote surgery. While these types of applications may (operative word is may) end up being part of the 5G ecosystem, they are a nominal part of 5G. The business case for 5G is in improved network reliability and cheaper delivery of services. All of the glamorous applications will require significant densification- which many experts still question as economically justifiable anywhere other than urban areas.

3. The average consumer won’t see the benefit from 5G in any significant fashion until 2021 at the earliest.
It doesn’t matter when each carrier says they will have some cities online or test markets active. 5G use will be constrained by handset availability and business development even in these test markets.

I don't mean to be disrespectful to the work of non-technical reporters, but rather to clarify certain topics related to 5G that I've seen the media get wrong.
How about you? Have you come across hyped or technically incorrect 5G commentaries or articles? What did they claim?

Our Predictions for the Wireless (and Wired) Industries in 2018

March 20, 2018 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

Every year, we put together our prognostications for the coming year. This year, we are obviously a little late – primarily because the beginning of the year has been very active for SITA. In the final days of 2017, I drafted a “State of SITA” email to our staff, predicting that 2018 would be the Year of More. And that’s just what we are seeing – more of everything. More proposed new leases – both from carriers and tower companies looking to build new towers. More amendment activity on existing sites as all four carriers are actively pursuing applications for site mods. More lease extension offers and more lease buyout offers with more rent or more money, respectively. More of our clients are seeing substantial offers to acquire their leasehold interests at a premium. So, what does that mean for 2018?

1. 5G Becomes Closer to Reality and Farther from Carrier Fiction.

Anybody else annoyed with 5G hype? Seems like you can’t look at the trade magazines or TV ads or newspapers without seeing an article or ads with one carrier proclaiming why their 5G vision is better than the others. Hint: 5G has the same potential for each carrier. Their visions are different because the carriers don’t have the same spectrum or fiber. With 5G being so encompassing in terms of wired and wireless technologies, it necessarily will be deployed differently for each carrier.

Guess what, each cable company, fiber provider, and wireless internet service provider will have their own distinctive brand of 5G. But the good news is that instead of the vague marketing hype, we are already starting to get more specific but still preliminary information about the 2018 and 2019 strategies early in 2018.

This trend will continue when we start to see actual deployments. As previously stated, we are seeing more applications for site modifications on behalf of our clients. Some of these actually have pre-5G equipment specified, and, as the year goes on, we will see actual 5G equipment being deployed. While it may be pre-standard, it is critical to remember that 5G is an evolution, not a revolution. (Bring on the comments.)

2. Whatever the G, It Still Means More Macrocell Activity.

Every year around this time, we are asked how this year stacks up against the previous year in terms of carrier activity, especially as it pertains to tower companies. Most years, we tend to be optimistic, but this is probably the year we are most optimistic about.For the first time in years, we are seeing actual, repeated, and specific activity by Sprint. Vendors are actually hiring to staff Sprint projects, applications are coming in, and projects that were on hold for years are coming back up.

Landowners are being contacted by Lendlease on behalf of Sprint and by Sprint directly. Mobilitie is actively pursuing small cell applications (the normal way this time). This is on top of AT&T FirstNet activity (2H 2018), T-Mobile rural expansion, and Verizon’s continued steady-eddy development. It’s a good year to be a tower company other than projections #3 and #7 below.

3. And Carriers Are More Willing Than Ever to Consider Alternatives to Existing Towers.

Unfortunately, we will start to an increase in cell tower lease terminations (i.e. churn) in the not so distant future, just as much of the Clearwire, Cricket, MetroPCS, Nextel, US Cellular lease terminations is coming to a close.

Why? Because carriers are less willing to accept high-dollar sites, especially when they have build-to-suit tower companies that are willing to make questionable investment decisions to build new towers next to existing towers. Furthermore, structural capacity issues of existing towers will strain the ability of wireless carriers to make site modifications without substantive structural modifications required to the tower. Rather than put more money into OPT (other people’s towers), the carriers will see the opportunity to build another tower adjacent to the existing tower, thereby limiting their future Opex and pushing Capex to an asset they own.

Still thinking that this won’t happen in scale? What we are seeing day to day suggests otherwise. Fortunately, the terminations may not immediately impact TowerCo revenue, but they will in the future as the underlying leases expire or to the earliest date that they can be terminated. Already, some tower companies like American Tower are starting to tell landowners that they can’t offer terms as good as previously on lease extensions because they have received non-renewal notices from AT&T. (As an aside, we also expect to see more announcements similar to that of Crown Castle’s, where they extended some of their underlying Master Lease Agreements in order to prevent further lease terminations.)

4. Fiber, Fiber, Fiber.

More fiber deployed. More glass ordered. More puffery by some carriers of how they can handle backhaul through agreements with cable companies. More dark fiber than previous years. More fiber redundancy.

The carriers who don’t have fiber will find themselves rushing to deploy it as 5G becomes closer to reality and customer expectations are measured against wireless carriers that have dense fiber. Having 5G-capable wireless transmission equipment won’t mean much if the end user can’t use 5G because of too many users and too little fronthaul/backhaul. Already, Verizon has hinted that 2018 Capex will be skewed more toward fiber than 2017. AT&T announced in March that they anticipate that fiber deployment will accelerate, which was partially due to the 2019 deadline for deployment to 12.5 million homes as a result of an agreement with the FCC during the DirecTV acquisition.Expect the same from other carriers. We had this same projection in our 2017 projections, and we expect this year to be even better.

5. Edge Computing Relies on Fiber – and Small Cells.

Not familiar with edge computing? To quote Wikipedia, edge computing “is a method of optimizing cloud computing systems by performing data processing at the edge of the network, near the source of the data. This reduces the communications bandwidth needed between sensors and the central datacenter by performing analytics and knowledge generation at or near the source of the data.This approach requires leveraging resources that may not be continuously connected to a network such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, and sensors.” In other words, it puts computing resources closer to the end user.

What is required for edge computing? The oversimplified answer is that three things are needed: fiber, power, and a secure location for equipment. Guess who has all three of these in spades: wireless providers, cable companies, fiber entities, and tower companies. Expect to see a flurry of announcements about edge computing in 2018, with intensity ultimately rivaling that of 5G announcements. But, like 5G, these will still be more hype than reality, at least for another year or two.

6. But the Road to Deploying Small Cells Isn’t Settled Yet!

After a series of victories last year in statewide legislation, the carriers and tower companies suffered a setback in the vetoing of similar legislation in California. Industry favorable legislation will be introduced again in CA and perhaps passed if the wireless industry is willing to back down the totality of their demands. However, cities are starting to see what good small cell deployment looks like and what bad small cells deployment looks like.

More information is available about small cells that are more positively received or just not noticed, and those installations that, on their face, are objectionable. Some short-sighted companies (not just one that starts with “M”) have deployed some really bad small cells/macros/mini-macros on utility poles and on new poles in the Right of Way (ROW). (See the City of Santa Rosa vs Verizon – which suggests that just because you have the right to install something ridiculous doesn’t mean that you should.)

Cities are becoming more intelligent and will start to demand attractive small cells. I suspect that we will see more intelligent and organized opposition to statewide legislation while simultaneously seeing the wireless industry increase the pressure through lobbying and contributions to state legislators. We will also see some state legislators cave to pressure from their constituents when the above-mentioned short-sighted companies install ugly small cells in front of people’s homes and businesses. We are already seeing municipalities draft contracts that protect their interests better, even in states with small cell legislation. Don’t get me wrong, I suspect that the industry still comes out ahead at the state and federal level overall, but we will see municipalities be innovative as well in how they maintain their ROWs.

7. All of This Activity Requires More Capable Workers, Which the Industry Simply Doesn’t Have.

The only thing that will hinder the Year of More is not enough qualified tower crews. In our regular discussions with industry vets, the same topic comes up: where can we find tower crews to do the work?

With AT&T’s FirstNet commencing in earnest, T-Mobile’s continued 600MHz build, Sprint’s tri-band overlays and new macros/small cells, and Verizon’s steady macro and small cell deployment, there simply aren’t enough tower crews to go around. Expect to see announcements in earnings calls about why rollouts aren’t happening as planned due to labor shortages.

The irony is that the wireless carriers helped cause this labor shortage by driving the price down so effectively that many tower construction companies found other non-wireless work rather than accept sub-standard terms.

8. 2018 Will be the Year for Landowners to Secure Their Cell Tower Lease Revenue.

2017 was the first year where we started advising our clients that securing their cell tower lease revenue was more important than maximizing it. The wireless service provider toolbox has more tools in it than ever before to relocate/terminate high-dollar sites. That’s not to say that the carriers won’t continue to pay top dollar for unique locations, just that some locations that were previously unique are no longer unique.

That means that smart landowners/building owners will endeavor to understand the risks to their cell site/cell tower lease, especially if the lease rate being paid for the cell site is significantly higher than average. Depending on the location and the availability of other options (small cells, new build-to-suit towers, cell splitting), you may find that it is better to sell the lease or accept some small concessions in order to gain long-term security in your lease.

The year of 2018 offers a wide range of opportunities and uncertainties. Devil is in the details, and it's all about how you play your cards. If you're a wireless sector investor and want to talk through our projections and how they might impact the wireless stocks, we can be engaged for short discussions or more in-depth analysis of the sector. If you are looking for real-time data about what is actually happening at the collocation lease level or with equipment modifications- we have it in spades.
If you are a landowner or an existing client of Steel in the Air, please get in touch to schedule a free consultation to discuss your needs and if/how we can help. You can reach me on LinkedIn with a message or contact us here.

Not So Fast- California Governor Vetoes Small Cell Bill.

October 18, 2017 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

Sunday night, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a contentious statewide small cell bill (SB649) which is one of many similar bills already passed in eleven other states. The bill would have removed local control over the placement of small cells and would have limited the fees that municipalities could charge for access to municipal pole infrastructure to $250/year.

This veto is fairly significant as the legislation has sailed through most other states without much influential opposition. The wireless industry has been targeting states for such relief from what they deem to be costly and time consuming small cell jurisdictional review and fees. In our opinion, the FCC seems to prefer that states regulate the fee structure but may choose to preempt local siting restrictions and approval process. AT&T has been the primary proponent of these statewide initiatives and has brought to bear a very well-financed and aggressive lobbying campaign at the state level to help push such legislation through.

The bill can still be pushed through with a 2/3rd majority in both assemblies. The bill passed the Senate by a 22 to 10 margin with 8 votes not recorded. The bill passed the Assembly with a 46 to 16 margin with 17 votes abstaining. If the vote occurred today with the same members voting as they did before, they would override the veto. Historically though, the California legislatures have been unwilling to override Governor Brown’s vetoes.

Why is this significant?

• California has more cities with difficult zoning that almost any other state in the US.

• California is near the top in terms of average small cell fee. This is not surprising given #1.

• California represents 12% of the US population. If one assumes a conservative total of 500,000 small cells to be deployed in the US and assumes that deployment will follow population, 60,000 of them will be deployed in California. Rates for small cell leases in California typically are 10 times higher or more than what the bill allowed at $250/year.

• Small cell deployment tends to follow areas of dense population. Of the densest urban areas of over 1,000,000 population, the top three are in California with five total in the top 10.

Before you assume though that this portends poorly for other statewide initiatives, we are cautious to point out that California cities tend to be more influential in statewide politics and that the opposition to the small cell legislation was by far the most organized and substantial as compared to that in other states.

Impact on Carriers (T, S, VZ, TMUS)

Despite industry rhetoric to the contrary, this won’t stop 5G nor will it prevent deployment of advanced technologies in California. None of the wireless carriers will allow California wireless throughput or quality of service to languish while customer’s churn to the best network in their area. However, this will delay deployment of small cells in California vis-à-vis other states that have passed small cell legislation although we don’t expect the delay to be material. There will be a negative impact on Opex for all carriers if the veto is not overridden and another bill is not passed in its place.

Impact on OEMs and E&C Companies (COMM, NOK, ERIC, MTZ, DY)

OEMs and E&C would have benefitted from the looser regulatory environment in CA both in terms of timing and amount of small cell and fiber investment. Ultimately, small cells will be deployed but perhaps in fewer numbers.

Impact on TowerCos (AMT, CCI, SBAC)

There will be a slight improvement on lease-up in California for the public tower companies as wireless carriers may choose to add short-term capacity via new macrocells on towers and existing structures as the Opex for a small cell stays higher relative to the Opex of a macrocell.

The Real Reason T-Mobile Increased Its Data Cap to 50GB

October 2, 2017 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

(Guess what – it isn’t because they feel their network can handle it!)

T-Mobile recently increases their data cap to 50GB before deprioritization occurs. For those who aren’t familiar with the difference between throttling and deprioritization, each of the wireless carriers has a cap on the data usage under their unlimited plans. Some carriers will simply throttle your data use to 3G speeds when you reach the cap, while others will deprioritize your data requests below other users who have not exceeded the cap especially in areas where there is network congestion. These caps are:

AT&T– 22GB

Verizon– 22GB

Sprint– 23GB

T-Mobile– 50GB (up from 32GB)

Some analysts have speculated that this is indicative that T-Mobile has a better network and believes that the additional GBs won’t impact T-Mobile as much as it would the other carriers. We tend to see this differently and point to a seemingly unrelated recent article in Fortune about how T-Mobile was asked to stop making fastest wireless data speed claims. We won’t bore you with an explanation of the actual testing mechanisms, but suffice it to say that every carrier (except Sprint) selectively chooses between various wireless testing sites and apps and pick and choose the results that best meet their advertising needs. At the end of the day, wireless is highly local for most people, and it really doesn’t matter who is the fastest everywhere else, only who is the fastest in the area that you use your device in. Furthermore, we doubt that very many people feel that LTE isn’t fast enough for virtually everything they want to do on their device other than 4K video which candidly, who cares if you can see 4K video on your phone or iPad?

Nonetheless, for T-Mobile, they can’t make the claim that their network is more reliable nor can they make the claim that they have the most coverage. So, they have to push other tangibles- like the fastest network. Make no mistake, T-Mobile has done a wonderful job of building out their network and adding faster LTE and carrier aggregation. They also are aggressively expanding to get closer to Verizon in terms of overall coverage. But we don’t believe for a minute that they believe that their network can over the longer term sustain 50GB per user per month. Fortunately, the average smartphone user in the US only uses 4GB per month, so increasing to 50GB only puts a small amount of strain on the network, at least until the average users with unlimited starts to really use it as unlimited.

What T-Mobile really stands to gain from this move is that it increases the average speed across their network especially on users that have used between 22GB and 50GB and possibly even though that use more than 50GB in non-congested areas. Because the other wireless carriers throttle users at lower amounts, throttling to 3G decreases speed by a factor of 1/4^th to 1/5^th as compared to 4G. This delta will increase over time. So, by increasing the cap, T-Mobile effectively increases the average data speed, thereby perhaps enabling them to claim once again that their network is the fastest. We wish that the testing companies would just start providing information on unthrottled and throttled performance for average speed separately so that consumers can make an informed decision. If the average person uses 4GB per month, why should they care what the average speed on a throttled plan?

Fundamentally though, this is good for landowners, tower companies, OEMs, and engineering and construction companies. Any increase in the amount of data before throttling or deprioritization increases use of the networks- and increases in the use of the networks require additional capacity which ultimately yields more site deployment and modification work.

Sprint T-Mobile Merger? Who Wins and Who Loses

September 22, 2017 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

It looks like the Sprint/T-Mobile merger rumors may be serious this time. Reuters suggests that the parties are close to finalizing a merger. Obviously, we have been down this road before- Sprint and T-Mobile are the Sam and Diane of today’s wireless world. Everyone knows they will eventually try to get together, but their personalities are pretty diametrically opposed. This time though, reports seem to suggest that there is more to today’s round of talks than previous ones and that the parties are closer to a deal than ever before.

We can’t forget that any merger will need to be approved by the FCC and the DOJ. Personally, I suspect that the DOJ will be tougher to get approval as the FCC seems to be positioning itself to approve this type of merger already. For proof of this thesis, look at the 2016 Wireless Competition Report- the first one in a while that came to the conclusion that wireless is competitive in the US and one where the FCC selectively chose widely varying timeframes to prove the point they were trying to make in each section of the review. The DOJ though doesn’t have to agree though, and it is hard to suggest that consumers will remotely be better off by a combined Sprint and T-Mobile merger- especially after seeing how wildly successful T-Mobile has been as the Uncarrier in almost singlehandedly creating new competition in the wireless sector.

FORESEEN CONSEQUENCES

This has obvious negative consequences for OEMs, wireless engineering and construction companies, tower cos, and landowners/site owners. We know because we have the first-hand experience in dealing with previous mergers. Like AT&T/Cingular, Sprint/Nextel, Verizon/Alltel, Sprint/Clearwire, T-Mobile/MetroPCS, and AT&T/Cricket. All these mergers occurred after we started Steel in the Air.

We helped numerous landowner clients deal with the initial rounds of threats from the combined entity that they would terminate the ground lease if the client didn’t agree to revised terms. We advised private tower owners who were in the process of selling towers on newly revised (and lower) offers they received from prospective buyers after a merger was announced. We provided guidance to private equity on tower portfolio valuations both prior to and after failed and successful mergers. We tracked how many leases were terminated and how many sites were decommissioned. We observed how the wireless carriers reviewed their portfolios and which sites they ended up choosing to terminate. We watched new construction activity from the merged carriers abate for some time while they figured out what sites to keep or not and what additional sites they needed. And we observed what happened when they did start constructing again.

BUT…TODAY’S WIRELESS ENVIRONMENT IS DIFFERENT

All beneficiaries of new wireless construction (OEMs, Towercos, E&C companies) like to suggest that there is increased site development after the merger. They allude to the fact that they increased site counts after previous mergers. However, none of these companies directly address the loss of future business or growth that would have occurred if there had been no merger. Nor do they point out that today’s wireless environment is different and the merger of these two companies will be different if it occurs. How so, you ask?

1. Macrocells are no longer the only means of meeting capacity demands. Furthermore, in most of the previous mergers, there wasn’t the same amount of overlap in macro cells as there is today on Sprint and T-Mobile’s networks. We are currently working on an analysis of the exact amount of overlap between the two networks in areas of the country where we have data with all or most of the Sprint and T-Mobile sites in an area. We will examine same site overlap and adjacent site overlap in this study as we found in previous mergers that some sites as far apart as 1 mile were terminated.

2. Both networks already cover most urban and suburban areas– so macro sites won’t need to be kept for coverage reasons as they might have been in previous mergers.

3. Previous mergers were more difficult to complete than this merger due to different technologies used by each carrier in most of the mergers. Today’s environment is mostly LTE- with the focus of going all LTE. Sprint legacy CDMA subs and T-Mobile legacy GSM will need to be addressed- but much easier today than it was for Sprint CDMA and Nextel iDEN.

4. Sprint hasn’t been doing a lot in the last two years from a CapEx perspective- but T-Mobile has. We anticipated an increase in wireless CapEx in 2018 primarily driven by new Sprint work- but that won’t occur now. E&Cs and OEMs will lose this anticipated upside, making existing carrier contracts more valuable and new ones more competitive, ultimately driving down margin after an initial spike from decommissioning activity.

5. For Towerco’s, the loss of a fourth active NATIONAL carrier has a significantly greater impact overall as compared to the loss of a fifth or sixth active REGIONAL carrier. The margin in operating towers increases with each additional wireless carrier on the tower. Decrease the number of carriers and not only do you decrease the revenue but you decrease the margin.

SO, WHO BENEFITS?

Personally, I struggle to see how consumers benefit and the investment community must agree with me as AT&T and Verizon’s stocks both increased after the new rumors came out. Investors anticipate that both companies will be able to increase their pricing with lesser competition from two smaller competitors trying to grab market share.

Sprint benefits the most. With their primary focus over the last two years being cleaning up their P&L and balance sheet in anticipation of a merger, their network has suffered. As a result, they either had to start spending or merge. T-Mobile will gain subscribers and scale.

Free market proponents will benefit, especially those that think that the market should dictate competition, not regulatory entities.

What’s Happened So Far in Wireless in 2017?

September 20, 2017 by Ken Schmidt Leave a Comment

As we look back over the first half of 2017, there has been much non-activity on the merger front. Many people (myself included) expected greater merger and acquisition activity but other than a few fiber related transactions, nothing material has transpired. Sprint and T-Mobile are still separate companies, and DISH has not merged with or been acquired by anyone. So here are the most important stories or events of the year on a carrier by carrier and tower company by tower company basis so far.

1. AT&T is awarded FirstNet, but benefits still haven’t flowed down to tower companies, original equipment manufacturers, and landowners. There has been much discussion, but there haven’t been any substantive modification or new build activity as a result by AT&T. In short, we are all just waiting for the project to start in earnest. However, when it starts, it will start not with a whimper…

2. In the more of the same category, Verizon is refocusing its efforts on reducing leasing costs. So far, we have seen Verizon choosing not to join the very public and vocal opposition to traditional tower leasing models as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. However, they have hired Accenture to help them use standard renegotiation efforts like those from Md7 or Blackdot to try to renegotiate leases. What Verizon has done very effectively is push for 2% annual escalation or less in their new leases. The benefit of this change may be tempered though by their site acquisition agent’s willingness to increase the base lease rate to adjust for the reduction in escalation. We also see increased activity by Verizon to build their towers next to existing public tower company towers to avoid collocating on those towers.

3. While this is not that much of a surprise, T-Mobile has been killing it, and their network performance is increasing. Churn is historically low, cost of services is low, subscriber growth is high, and they have started building out 600MHz. Wouldn’t want to be one of the other wireless carriers trying to compete with the T-Mobile marketing juggernaut- T-Mobile gets away with snarky while when their competitors try it, it comes across as desperate (Sprint) or stodgy (AT&T and Verizon). We already see increased activity from T-Mobile modifications and new towers, and they are not even really started yet.

4. Sprint deserves kudos for their turnaround especially on their cost cutting having demonstrated profitability for the first quarter in the last 13 or so. Of course, they may have had more to cut than the other wireless carriers. Sprint also deserves accolades for their stream of quarterly earnings calls where they try to explain how they can continue to underspend their competitors quarter after quarter, year after year, with new technological innovations like HPUE, MagicBox, Spark, and Mini-macros. (Hint- they cannot as evidenced by Sprint’s Capex increase last quarter of over 100% from the previous quarter. Expect to see similar or higher Capex in this quarter from Sprint and perhaps even higher in the last quarter of the year). Equally enjoyable is the timing of all of the leaks related to potential mergers and acquisitions of Sprint that somehow happen to occur just before a bad earnings report or after a bad news story comes out. (Not saying that Sprint leaked the stories, just pointing out the odd but consistent timing). The good news with Sprint is that it is never boring. I do have to commend Sprint on their Double the Price pop-up stunt- snarky worked in this case.

5. All four carriers have gone Unlimited. Following T-Mobile’s lead, the other wireless carriers each have moved to unlimited plans. As a result, overall wireless service revenue has declined. This “race to the bottom” appears to have stabilized. Before you feel too bad for the wireless carriers, remember that each of them generated over 25% EBITDA (profit) margins this past quarter from wireless and Verizon has one of its best quarters ever regarding profit margin. If revenue is declining, how can profit margin be increasing, you might ask? The wireless carriers have been squeezing contractors and vendors to reduce their operating expenditures all while increasing the efficiency of their wireless networks. Despite attractive profit margins, expect further cost cutting and a renewed emphasis on negotiating better leases with landowners and tower companies as shown in the articles on our blog below.

6. Crown Castle has had an active year purchasing fiber, announcing the acquisition of both Wilcon and Lightower Fiber Networks and completing the acquisition of FPL Fibernet. Crown sees a vision of a small cell world where fiber is critical to being able to persuade wireless carriers to place their small cell infrastructure on Crown fiber and poles. We would agree with them but would temper expectations slightly due to the next point below and due to efforts by wireless carriers to deploy their own fiber networks.

7. The wireless carriers collectively have been successful at convincing eleven states to pass bills that limit local review of proposed small cells, prohibit the forced collocation on existing poles, and reduce the lease rate that cities can charge for attachment rights to existing poles or to the public right of way. Some of the most populous states (Florida, Texas) have these bills in effect or about to go into effect. We hear of increased litigation already filed or planned to oppose these statutes, so expect more controversy on this legislation in coming months. Conceivably, these statutes will reduce the number of small cells leased on private property and could in isolated situations allow for termination of existing macrocells. In the eleven states that have passed such legislation, expect to see small cells and new poles popping up across urban areas in the very near future.