Phone or Toothbrush: Pick One

A new study commissioned by Bank of America found that 47% of Americans admitted they wouldn’t last a day without their smartphones. They key word here is “admitted.” Why is this important to tower industry professionals? These statistics are great to have in your back pocket, especially when you attend a zoning meeting with residents opposing your tower. Could they live without their phone? If not, then they probably should reconsider their resistance to the structure. Recently, an industry professional explained to me about how during a town meeting, a man was vehemently fighting this tower explaining that the town doesn’t need it and he doesn’t use his cell phone. Then his phone went off. I’m sure there are a couple dozen more stories just like this. CNBC reported, “A total of 91 percent of the 1,000 respondents called their phones “very important” — the same percentage who said their car and deodorant are very important too. And of those ages 18 to 24, 88 percent said they view their mobile phones as more important than the Internet, deodorant, and their toothbrush.

Tower Accidentally Decommissioned

What would you do if you went to your tower site one day and the structure was dark? This is what happened to Mick Rapeer, director of engineering for Connoisseur Media Pennsylvania, after he received a call saying there was no audio going to the transmitter.I was figuring it was another Microsoft Windows error, which is usually the case,” he told Radio World. “So I logged into the automation system to look and it was going about its business playing. I then logged onto the WSBG website and the audio was playing there … OK, somewhere the audio stopped getting to the transmitter. I followed the audio chain and everything looked good all the way to the STL transmitter, which had audio and RF,” he explained. “Hmmm, has to be the STL receiver at the transmitter site.”  Continue reading here. 

AT&T Spending May Top $21 Billion, Tower Industry to Benefit

After a brief scare of contractor layoffs and AT&T tightening the purse strings, analysts are reporting that AT&T may end up surpassing its stated intention of $21 billion in capital spending this year, as it becomes more comfortable with its cash position. Barclays U.S. telecom analyst Amir Rozwadowski today reiterates an Equal Weight rating on shares of AT&T, and a $35 price target because of this reason. According to Barrons, “That could be beneficial to tower owners such as SBA Communications and Crown Castle International. The tower stocks have been among notable underperformers, even relative to the overall underperformance of the telecom group, writes Rozwadowski, with the stocks up just 0.6% last week, relative to the 1.2% gain in the Standard & Poor‘s 500index. Rozwadowski notes that ‘increasing questions have arisen’ in recent weeks about the ‘pace and trajectory of AT&T’s spending.’ But, ‘Overall our checks suggest that the broader drivers of intensified competition and rising bandwidth growth should continue to govern decisions on spending – which we expect to remain at heightened levels for at least the foreseeable future.’ Beyond the competitive aspect, it’s possible that ‘the combination of the recent DIRECTV deal, potentially beneficial tax legislation and the ability to monetize rising handset receivables may give rising visibility on the cash position, thereby possibly providing comfort on moving forward with key spending initiatives,’ he writes. AT&T shares yesterday rose 18 cents, or half a percent, to close at $36.02. Shares of Crown Castle closed down 24 cents, or 0.3%, at $73.92. Shares of SBA closed down 36 cents, or 0.4%, at $101.37.”

AT&T to Pick Up Pace This Quarter

There’s been talk about AT&T slowing spending when it comes to their wireless infrastructure deployment while they discuss a merger with DirecTV. Although the company said this deal would not affect their wireless network deployment, RCR Wireless reported otherwise sharing that contractors have been laid off and there was a widespread capital spending freeze in place at AT&T. The future may be getting brighter with analysts and contractors saying AT&T will resume spending this quarter. AT&T spending during the second half should be “quite solid,” according to analyst Michael Genovese of MKM Partners. He said the cuts made during the first half were not as devastating as he thought they were at first, RCR Wireless reported. “I think they were actually pretty limited,” said Genovese. “I think they had to do with new 4G tower builds, but not with outfitting existing towers, and not really so much on the wireline part of the network, just primarily on the wireless side and a little bit of backhaul associated with that.” (Source: RCR Wireless) New tower builds were hit the hardest and it’s unclear whether those workers who were laid off will be brought back on once projects begin again. Hopefully, the analysts and contractors are correct and spending will pick up soon.

Superstorm Sandy Put Community Back to the 19th Century for 12 Days

Two years ago the Mount Pleasant town officials turned a blind eye to the lack of wireless infrastructure in the area when they denied the construction of cell tower on town land. Not only did the town lose out on $200,000, they also deprived the community of the ability to communicate six months later. In a letter to the Lohud, a newspaper in New York, written on June 26th, Ken Lyons of White Plains claims that the only thing left to look at in Mount Pleasant will be paved building lots and a few trees placed between. “A very sad prospect due to our open parcels of land are running out quickly,” he said. “We need to think of preserving such valuable resources, not diminishing them in the interest of profit, and it needs to happen yesterday.” 

Continue reading here. 

You’re Breaking Up!

Over the weekend, Verizon customers from the midwest to the east coast started reporting problems with their service. The network outage is also affecting Verizon internally as we’ve heard that their northern billing system has been down since Wednesday night. Customers can’t pay their bills online or by phone since Verizon can’t pull up their accounts. Customers who just purchased a new Verizon phone are also out of luck as the outage also affects the new phone activation process. Company spokesperson Laura Merritt says the outages affect customers in the Northeast, Midwest and some southern states. “We are working on a fix,” said Merritt on Friday. Verizon has said that network services such as call, text and data are not impacted by the outages, says the company. However this directly contradicts what some customers are tweeting about using the #verizonoutage hashtag. On their website, Verizon is trying to spin this off as downtime due to “upgrades” but it doesn’t seem like any of their customers are buying it. Since they’re going with the “upgrades” excuse, I doubt we’ll hear about the real cause of the problem.

High Court Decision May Impact Other Privacy Issues

It was big news when the Supreme Court decided last week that police could not search the contents of a suspect’s phone without a warrant. But how will this decision impact other privacy challenges we have been facing? The ruling didn’t directly apply to bulk cell phone data gathering, but it did broadly reference the privacy protections that are due to the kinds of sweeping data available on today’s mobile devices, USA Today reported. “The court’s reasoning clearly recognizes that the aggregation of sensitive electronic data raises particularly acute Fourth Amendment concerns that call for more robust judicial protections of our privacy,” said Nathan Wessler, an attorney with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been fighting for the release of records about data collection across the U.S. “While the Supreme Court has not yet settled the issue in other contexts, lower courts can learn much from this decision about how to safeguard our privacy rights in the digital age.” (Source: USA Today) This ruling has set precedent for cases against law enforcement using technology to access data from cell phone towers. There have been many court cases questioning the legality of this technology, but no official stance has been taken. USA Today reported that since December, nine states have adopted laws requiring police to obtain search warrants to gather cell phone data. Two other states already had laws on the books and at least 10 more legislatures are weighing similar measures.

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