Thanks to early siting entrepreneurs Jeffrey Stoops and Marc Ganzi, Boca Raton, Fla. is fast becoming the hub for tower owners’ corporate offices as witnessed by numerous key players’ offices in a two mile stretch along and off of Congress Ave. SBA Communications CEO Stoops used to run his company from its corporate office off of Broken Sound Pkwy., almost within shouting …
Fish fry investigated by U.S. Cellular and the culprit isn’t a cell tower
Commentary Community newspapers suck dry every opportunity they get to write about cell tower rejections, protests and lawsuits because their audience is local, but most wireless industry media refrain from triggering their readers’ boredom thresholds with aggregated NIMBY comatose clutter. However, out of dozens of daily Google alerts Wireless Estimator receives with gag reflex headlines – Harlem says hell no…, …
Shentel to acquire Ntelos in a $640M regional deal that doesn’t include towers
Mid-Atlantic regional wireless carrier Shentel announced that it will be acquiring another carrier, Ntelos, in a deal set at $640 million, including net debt. The transaction will double Shentel’s subscriber base, but not its 151 tower count since Ntelos’ 103 towers were sold to Grain Management earlier this year for $41 million. Sprint is heavily involved in the transaction and …
Vertical Bridge picks up 43 Townsquare towers and the ability to share in marketing 250 more
Townsquare Media is the latest broadcaster that sees the benefits of selling their broadcast towers that they see as a valuable, but unnecessary asset. The company has announced a deal to sell 43 towers to Vertical Bridge, a company owned by Digital Bridge Holdings for $22.8 million. However, Townsquare will still keep 250 towers, which Vertical Bridge will market to …
Routers, fiber line cut blamed for massive cell phone outage in the Southeast
Cell phone service was restored Tuesday at about 8:00 p.m. after a major outage in the southeastern United States that began approximately five hours earlier in the day. In a statement issued by AT&T at 10 p.m., the carrier said: “Wireless and wireline service has been restored for all customers in parts of the Southeast affected by a hardware-related network …
In a surprise move, SBA walks out with cash and away from its investment in DAS
Five year DAS ride for SBA unexpectedly ends In a deal that took many industry observers by surprise, DAS developer ExteNet Systems, Inc. announced that Digital Bridge Holdings and Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners will recapitalize the company with more than $1 billion dollars, and Digital Bridge’s CEO Marc Ganzi will assume the position of Chairman of the Board. Key members of …
Crown Castle’s tenants per tower take a slight dip as revenues show a marked increase
Although Crown Castle’s site rental revenues for the second quarter were up $26.3 million over its 2014 quarter, the tower owner’s average tenants per tower for sites operated for 10 years or longer fell off slightly in all BTAs. The tenant per tower average in the top 100 BTAs for sites operated 10 years or more was 2.9 compared to …
Rubio’s bill will expedite deployment of wireless infrastructure on Federal properties and free up spectrum
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, joined with subcommittee chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and fellow members Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) to introduce the “Wireless Innovation Act of 2015” yesterday, a bill to reallocate spectrum used …
NWSA delivers a detailed overview of their tower worker certification program to OSHA
In response to OSHA’s request for information regarding communication tower safety due by Monday, the National Wireless Safety Alliance provided an emphatic ‘yes’ to the agency regarding its question: Is there a need for a standardized, industry-wide training or certification program? Provided by NWSA consultant Chuck Slagle, a former Sprint EH&S executive, the safety alliance said, “The NWSA will standardize …
CTIA & PCIA deployment lawsuit charge: 3000% small cell size structure increase is an ‘imagined horrible’
CTIA – The Wireless Association and PCIA – The Wireless Infrastructure Association, have joined together to urge the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to reject a lawsuit filed April 24, 2015 by Cumberland County, Maryland and cities in California, Washington and Texas that is asking that the court vacate the FCC’s 2014 Infrastructure Order adopted last fall to …
Leading safety expert steps forward as the tower industry’s response to OSHA tanks
Whereas an embarrassing majority of industry safety professionals and tower climbers, as high as 99% or more, have ignored an opportunity to assist OSHA in assessing current practices and ways that will result in lowering fatalities and injuries in tower construction and maintenance, an Illinois State University professor, Dr. Thomas P. Fuller, while traveling in France, took the time today to …
Expensive earthquake tower design law passes following industry indifference during hearings
PCIA – The Wireless Infrastructure Association came out against the City of Los Angeles’ newly passed ordinance requiring all new telecommunication towers to be designed as a Class lll Structure subject to an importance factor of 1.50 of the TIA-222 standard, a requirement that PCIA says could increase the cost of a tower between 30 to 200% and could stymie …
LA’s earthquake-proof tower ordinance is heavily based on an incorrect news article
The Los Angeles City Council on Friday moved to require future cell phone towers to be designed and built with a 1.5 importance factor over the current design code, EIA/TIA-222-G, so that if there ever was a severe earthquake in the city, cell towers would “still be functional.” However, their concern about the current code not being adequate was heavily …
PCIA’s ‘view from the top’ shows a little bottoming out; tall tower crew shortage possible
A common thread throughout yesterday’s PCIA – The Wireless Infrastructure Association’s Hollywood, Fla. conference was that AT&T has pulled back on their builds, Sprint is almost in a holding pattern and T-Mobile is providing a number of opportunities. Verizon, however, is seen as a steady engine that is assisting a slower than expected build in the second quarter. “Verizon continues …
New unraveled electromagnetism theory will not unhinge the tower industry
As PCIA – The Wireless Infrastructure Association kicks off its conference with an infrastructure developers meeting this afternoon in Hollywood, Fla., it’s unlikely that the demise of cell towers will be a hot topic, but media pundits frequently disagree, citing new technology that will replace them with palm size transceivers. One industry editor recently said, the traditional cell tower infrastructure …
Subcarrier’s Houston expansion bolsters its ever increasing tower and rooftop count
An industry pioneer in high performance wireless infrastructure services, with a portfolio of some of the country’s best towers in high demand locations, New Jersey-based Subcarrier Communications, announced its Southwest market expansion and the hiring of key executives Dudley Norman and Greg Weger to lead market operations from their new Houston, Tex. office. As demands for wireless connectivity prove to …
With low visual impact, RFS has antennas hiding in plain sight
Radio Frequency Systems, a global wireless and broadcast infrastructure specialist, has announced its new AllClear transparent antenna product line. It is necessary to limit the visual impact of antennas as much as possible to reduce the difficulty of acquiring new sites and renew existing leases. The AllClear product line was specifically developed to meet this need for RFS customers worldwide …
Climbing higher for techs will not be possible in Google’s grand plan
Although Google is currently developing wireless service plans that will prohibit tower technicians from climbing to maintain the transceivers – because they’ll be at an elevation between 23,000 and 65,000 feet in the stratosphere – this week’s announcement that the company intends to offer MVNO wireless connectivity to customers in the U.S. will also exclude techs from working on Google-owned …
Report: 5G growth won’t be introduced as quickly as 4G networks
If you’re looking to cash in on increased contractor opportunities that will become available as America moves towards a still undefined 5G network, seen as the mobile interface on which the network of the 2020’s and 2030’s will be based, you might have to reevaluate your business plan, according to a new market data forecast released by ABI Research. Research …
