About Us
Welcome to Steel in the Air, your trusted source for cellular lease negotiations, lease valuations, and lease buyouts. We dedicate this website to the landowners we serve and have done our very best to make it a reputable public resource for the telecom industry – in specific, landowners, building owners and local governments.
integrity
We want to offer you value - not line our own pockets. Our goal is to help you however we can, and if we can't for the time being, we will tell you. We'll never encourage you to do something you're uncomfortable with.
customer loyalty
We work for you, not the cell phone or tower companies. Our goal is to get you the best lease possible. We also offer counsel for a full year after we evaluate your lease.
unparalleled expertise
17,000 leases with lease rate data, 300,000 cell site locations, and thousands of lease buyout and lease extension offers tracked. We have better data than anyone- and we know how to use it to your advantage.
Flexible Terms
We offer flexible payment terms to meet your specific needs. Unlike some of our competitors, we won't take a percentage of your lease. Instead, we charge one fixed, flat rate.
The Team
The Steel in the Air Bench
The deepest, most comprehensive brain trust in the wireless infrastructure industry.
The Core Elements No Single Competitor Can Match:
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The Crown Castle Inside Advantage: Direct, internal carrier-side experience mapping out corporate leasing playbooks, financial thresholds, and negotiation tactics.
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Deep Practical Real Estate Experience: Our team has practical experience either as real estate brokers, attorneys, or owners/operators.
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Legal & Analytical Precision: Executive leadership with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, sharpening every lease and buyout strategy.
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The Nation’s Largest Data Vault: 22 years of historical, independent tracking, yielding over 17,000 verified lease transactions across all 50 states.
Steel in the Air was founded in 2004 with a single, explicit purpose: to give landowners a genuine expert in their corner when negotiating against the most sophisticated real estate legal and leasing teams in the wireless industry. Twenty-two years later, that mission hasn’t changed — but the depth of the team behind it has grown into something no competitor in this space can match.
Most cell tower lease consultants operate alone, or list a roster of “advisors” who are rarely involved in actual client work. Some of those advisors, ironically, come to Steel in the Air when they themselves need answers. We built something different: a dedicated, full-time team of professionals — each with a distinct discipline — so that every client engagement draws on real collective expertise, not a single person’s opinion or a borrowed credential.
Our team brings together backgrounds that no single competitor can replicate under one roof: decades of hands-on tower development experience, inside knowledge of how Crown Castle structures its leasing decisions, active commercial real estate brokerage credentials, legal training, and 22 years of proprietary lease-rate data covering over 17,000 verified transactions across all 50 states. When you hire Steel in the Air, you’re not getting one consultant’s best guess — you’re getting the full weight of that bench applied to your specific situation.
Ken Schmidt
President & CEO, Steel in the Air
The nation’s foremost independent authority on cell tower leases and wireless infrastructure valuation.
At a Glance: The Authority Metrics
22+ Years of dedicated independent landowner advocacy (Est. 2004).
17,000+ Verified Leases tracked across all 50 states, tracking every major carrier and tower company.
Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
Trusted Media Source: Cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Bloomberg.
What separates Ken from others in this space isn’t a single stint at one tower company — it’s a career built across every dimension of the wireless infrastructure business. Before founding Steel in the Air, Ken worked on the development side of the industry: identifying sites, negotiating ground leases on behalf of tower builders, navigating zoning hearings, and evaluating whether a tower project would actually pencil out financially. He has seen this industry from the ground up, literally — and that 360-degree operating experience is exactly why the largest tower companies in the country retain Steel in the Air to help them evaluate which sites are worth building.
That depth of knowledge is also why Ken is the go-to source for the financial community. Top Wall Street analysts regularly invite Ken to speak to their institutional investors. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Bloomberg have all sought his commentary on wireless infrastructure markets. Municipalities and institutional investors retain him for cell tower due diligence. Ken holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Florida Levin College of Law — a credential that sharpens every lease review, buyout analysis, and negotiation strategy his team produces.
One of Ken’s founding principles — and a policy Steel in the Air has never abandoned — is that honest advice matters more than billable hours. Roughly 70% of people who call Steel in the Air are told they don’t need to hire anyone. That’s not a sales tactic. It’s the standard Ken set in 2004, and the reason Steel in the Air remains the thought leader in this industry more than two decades later.
History
During the five-year period from 1996-2001, the United States showed its sharpest increase in cell tower growth (30K cell sites in 1996 surged to 127K in 2001).
The Telecom Act of 1996 resulted in an era that was remarkably similar to the Wild West – wireless carriers and cell tower companies embarked upon an aggressive nationwide race to claim as many cell site locations as they could. (The major dissimilarity between the Wild West and the Telecom Era was that during the latter period, the land acquired was not meant to be simply a means of sustenance, but in every way was meant for profit).
The demand for cell towers was high and the suppliers (the tower companies) struggled to keep up. For a while, chaos ensued, along with a lot of shady marketing and deceptive business practices. In an effort to stay ahead of the game, tower companies would imply that they had actually built towers on cell site locations before they were, in fact, constructed.
Contact Us
Please reach out to us if you have any questions. We aim to be prompt!
Contact Us
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