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.
American Tower announced earnings earlier this week and we reviewed their earnings call transcript to get a better feel about what went right and wrong for American Tower. (Mostly right) Here are 10 of our observations. American Tower confirmed guidance for 2020. While many industries and companies are withholding guidance for 2020 due to the […]
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 […]
Verizon’s site acquisition agent reached out to our client to propose a “swap of (9) existing radios with (9) new radios”. They suggested to the client that there should be no rent increase for these modifications as it is just replacement of existing radios which care also known as remote radio units or RRU’s. On […]
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 […]
The 3/6/19 FCC Filing by T-Mobile attempts to recharacterize how the merger “benefits” the consumer by expanding fixed or nomadic wireless broadband service. The filing suggests that T-Mobile will utilize the combined assets of the two companies to provide an alternative to home wired broadband in LTE in the near term and 5G in the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]