What Makes Cell Towers Competitive?

Recently, Fierce Wireless ran an article about AT&T’s threat to public tower companies about how “successful” their tower development project with Tillman Infrastructure has been.  The article cites a Morgan Stanley report which claims that “On a national basis in a 0.5-mile radius, ~65% of towers have no competitor and just ~15% have more than […]

Research In Progress- Sprint vs. T-Mobile Site Overlap

We are currently working on a bespoke research project for a client where we examine the overlap between Sprint and T-Mobile cell sites.  The merger talks seem to have stalled while Softbank talks to Comcast, Charter, Warren Buffett, and anyone who will listen about merging or investing.   Nonetheless, there is still investor interest in […]

Are states going to opt-out of AT&T’s FirstNet?

Now that the Rivada court challenge appears to be resolved, many pundits and experts expect AT&T to be awarded the FirstNet contract.  Once the FirstNet contract is awarded to AT&T (only remaining qualified bidder), AT&T has 180 days to prepare state specific FirstNet plans.  States then have 90 days to decide to opt-in or out.   […]

Small Cells Per State in United States

To show the impact of 100,000 small cells being deployed in the US over the next few years, we looked at total population per state and created this map which assumes that small cell deployment will follow population.   In other words, a state's relative population is used as a proxy for small cell need […]

A Tale of Two Small Cell Providers – Part Two

Last year in April, we wrote about how Crown Castle and Mobilitie respectively approached the City of Orlando regarding small cells.    In that post, we described how each company approached the application process and why the City approved the Crown Castle small cells while it determined that the Mobilitie applications were incomplete. We recently […]

We Assessed the Accuracy of Wireless Coverage Maps per Carrier, and the Results Disappoint

It’s been a dozen years since Verizon’s catchphrase “Can you hear me now?” became a commonplace precept for any mobile phone user having problems with a cellular connection. Since then, there has been a tremendous amount of industry activity regarding partnerships, mergers, acquisitions and dissolutions amongst wireless service providers. Today, there are now three major […]

Our 2015 2nd-Half: Cell Tower Lease Forecast

The year of 2015 has started out flatter than most industry pundits expected.  The expectation was that first half 2015 would be fairly robust, but it hasn’t been.  We expected the first half to find at least two wireless carriers actively building out new cell towers, but that hasn’t been the case.  We examined our leads so far […]

How COAS Can Benefit from Cell Site Leases

In the United States, there are over 300,000 cell sites, encompassing those that are located on cell towers, other structures (like telephone poles and water towers), and rooftops.  Ken Schmidt, President of Steel in the Air, estimates that in Florida, there are between 500 – 750 cellular leases tied to rooftops located on condominium buildings.

CELL TOWER AND CELL SITE LOCATION DATA: A PRIMER

In reviewing some online commentary about cell tower location data on various forums and websites purporting to offer free cell tower location data, I thought it might be helpful to explain what is available and what is not available to individuals looking for cell tower and cell site locations.