As of April 1, 2020, T-Mobile completed their merger with Sprint. The combined company is now the third-largest wireless company in the United States. Since then, T-Mobile has been focused on evaluating all Sprint leases, and either absorbing or terminating them. In the past two years, many of our clients have been approached in regard to these superfluous Sprint (now T-Mobile) Cell Sites. If you are party to a Sprint cell site lease, and have not already been contacted by T-Mobile, then you should prepare for it in the near future. In preparing for a potential T-Mobile takeover of your lease, we can help you to:
In late 2012, T-Mobile announced it would sell 7,200 towers to Crown Castle. Those landowners who own the land upon which the 7,200 towers were built have since been receiving proposals from Crown Castle (as a successor to T-Mobile) to either extend or buy their lease. (Crown Castle now has the right to waive the consent to sell provision mentioned above). If you have received a proposal to extend the term of your lease or to purchase your lease, please contact us first.
Over the last 3 years, T-Mobile has been actively terminating or absorbing former Sprint towers and cell sites. Since their merger in 2020 with T-Mobile, Sprint has stopped all site deployment. Sprint leases will be kept and transferred to T-Mobile if there is no overlap in the given subject area. T-Mobile has or will terminate approximately
35,000 cell sites, mostly from Sprint. T-Mobile has built out mid-band 5G to approximately 287M people in the US. T-Mobile continues to utilize Black Dot and Md7 to renegotiate its leases to indiscriminately reduce costs.
Subscribers | ~55.0 M |
Number of Sites | 55,000 |
Small Cells | 35,000 |
Tower Sales |
In 2008, Sprint sold 3,300 (almost all) of its cell towers to TowerCo under a leaseback agreement. In 2005, Sprint subleased 6,000 towers to Global Signal (who was acquired by Crown Castle a year later) |
Acquisitions | Nextel, Clearwire, Sprint affiliates |
Lease Value | Low |
Steel in the Air has been assisting landowners, venue owners and communities with cellular/ wireless telecom lease negotiations for over a decade. We have reviewed hundreds of Sprint leases and know the ins and outs of the industry better than anyone. We take great pride in providing unique, unbiased and reliable guidance.
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