Verizon, AT&T to build hundreds of towers with Lightsquared founder
AT&T and Verizon have jointly agreed to build hundreds of new cell towers with Tillman Infrastructure, a company founded last year by Sanjiv Ahuja’s Tillman Global Holdings.
This potentially bad news for cell site landlords in the following ways:
You are now at greater risk of losing their cell sites if you have a single tenant AT&T/Verizon tower with American Tower or Crown Castle as the operator because AT&T/Verizon will likely construct a new tower where they share one base rent and not renew/extend their leases with American Tower or Crown Castle
The carriers will use this alliance to drive down rent increases resulting from lease extensions as they now have a more options to move a high rent cell tower.
This leaves American Tower and Crown Castle stuck between offering Landlords enough of a rent increase to extend knowing that AT&T / Verizon will not agree to increase their rent more than what they would pay if they moved to another location and shared the costs.
Both Verizon and AT&T are committed to reducing their network operating costs which will mean the eventual elimination of high rent tower locations.
For more info go to this RCR Wireless Article.