Where Elliott Management’s Attack on Crown Castle Small Cell Strategy Hits and Misses

We reviewed the Elliott Management slickly produced attack on Crown Castle ($CCI). In short, Elliott believes that CCI has underperformed its peers, American Tower (AMT) and SBA Communications (SBAC). While the underperformance is clear, I also think that Elliott’s analysis omits to give proper credence to the opportunity that fiber/small cells may provide to Crown Castle that its peers will miss.

Our Wireless Forecasts For 2020

As we do every year around this time, we provide our predictions for what we expect to happen in the upcoming year. Some of our predictions are safe and some are not. Some end up being correct and some aren’t. 1. 5G Continues to Underwhelm Consumers (For Now) . Wireless service providers launched their commercial […]

T-Mobile Sprint Merger Backup Plan?

One of our municipal clients has a water tower with T-Mobile and Sprint on it. T-Mobile has proposed to add antennas and equipment with Band 41 (Clearwire 2500 MHz spectrum) to T-Mobile’s rad center. See the image below with the antennas that service B41. Because the lease the client has with T-Mobile prevents the addition […]

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.

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 […]

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

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 […]

Not So Fast- California Governor Vetoes Small Cell Bill.

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 […]