During the last half of 2019 and early 2020, SteelTree Partners advised on the sale of several tower portfolios ranging from individual towers to mid-sized private portfolios. Some are traditional carrier led tower builds in highly difficult zoning areas with limited competing structures while some others can be best described as rural, unprotected by zoning, […]
One of the joys of being on this side of the business is the relationships we form with landowners- both leads and clients. This morning, I spoke with a lead who owns some land near Kansas City where Sprint PCS erected one of their first PCS towers. The subject tower has its own storied history- […]
A few weeks ago we visited a large investment bank to present our Q1 2019 Wireless Update findings to a group of investors and attended some private meetings. Here is a short recap of our top 10 findings. Applications for new towers has been rising slightly. Of applications to the FCC for new structures, nearly […]
Previously, we wrote about Tillman Infrastructure, a tower company that has expanded significantly to build towers near existing towers to encourage wireless carriers to move from the existing tower to the new tower, all in an effort to reduce lease rates. For over a year now, tower companies have publicly discounted the impact of these “build-to-relo” […]
Before the announcement by Sprint and T-Mobile of their merger, Reuters ran a story that suggested that a T-Mobile/Sprint deal “may cast shadow over tower companies”. The article points out that one of the major synergies of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger is “decommissioning cell sites”. No surprise here so far other than why the author of this article uses […]
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 […]
We have been getting a lot of questions from investors related to FirstNet equipment and the potential impact on TowerCos, with most questions pertaining to the timing and revenue from amendment activity from FirstNet antenna modifications. You may recall that in AT&T FirstNet Revisited, we reviewed the impact of AT&T winning the FirstNet RFP and […]
WHAT THE INDUSTRY SAYS The wireless industry has been pushing the fiction that small cells are the size of a pizza box. Here is a quote in a Wireless Week article– "Americans will benefit tremendously from innovations like 5G and the Internet of Things, which require more small cell facilities – often the size of […]
A landowner client of ours received this email from LCC, a company allegedly acting on behalf of Sprint where they claim that if the landowner doesn’t agree to concessions, that Lendlease will consider relocating the Sprint site. If you receive a similar request from Sprint, LCC, or Lendlease or another cell tower lease optimization company, […]