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 […]

Winners and Losers of the FCC Small Cell Order

On January 14, 2019, the FCC’s Declaratory Ruling and Third Report and Order went into effect and significantly reduced the rights of state and local public entities regarding their control of the placement of small cell or small wireless facilities. It limited their ability to charge wireless service providers for access to municipally owned poles […]

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 […]

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 […]

What’s Happened So Far in Wireless in 2017?

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 […]