Black Dot is known in the industry as a lease optimization company. It acts as a third party, working on behalf of wireless carriers (the Lessee), to negotiate cellular leases with landowners, building owners and public entities (the Lessor). Historically, Black Dot has worked for Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. Currently, we don’t see much from them other than occasional inquiries that they make on behalf of AT&T. These inquiries take the following format:
Black Dot Wireless agents are like skilled politicians — they provide scripts to your questions and when unable to answer off script, they either misdirect the question or fail to answer. Unless you understand Black Dot Wireless’s end game, you are at a severe disadvantage in the negotiations.
“Black Dot Wireless help-wanted ads suggest that their salesmen can earn over $200,000 annually by convincing landowners to agree to reduce their cell site lease rates.”
Black Dot takes advantage of wireless telecom industry dynamics, such as mergers and acquisitions, to persuade property owners to accept rent reductions. They do this by using scare tactics, like telling property owners that their lease is likely to be terminated unless they agree to rental reductions. While it’s correct that mergers and acquisitions will result in some cell tower redundancies and consolidation of cell sites, the percentage of sites affected is actually quite low. In the majority of the cases, property owners’ cellular leases are perfectly secure as is.
We have helped over 125 clients specifically with Black Dot Wireless negotiations. If you need help charting the waters with Black Dot, please contact us. If you have received an offer from Black Dot, forward it to us. We will review it at no charge and either recommend that you do nothing (decline to make changes) or, provided that we believe we can help, we will quote you a cost for our services.