AM Tower Owners Seeing Lucrative Offers for Property

Tower owners and AM radio station owners may have more options than it first appears for a joint Return on Investment.

Some owners of heritage AMs are receiving real estate offers from developers that are so lucrative they must seriously consider them. In some cases, they’ve decided to sell because the land surrounding the tower sites and directly under the structures and even the value of the AM station itself, is worth much more than the station’s revenue. Two big land deals Inside Towers recently covered are Cumulus-owned KABC/KLOS, Los Angeles and WMAL in Bethesda, Maryland.

Lease, rather than sale, opportunities exist for AM owners and carriers, though they’re not as common as arrangements between FM owners and telecoms because of the difficult engineering involved in preventing AM signal interference. Fletcher Heald & Hildreth Managing Partner, Frank Montero, tells Inside Towers “AM stations have been trying to use their towers for supplemental income by diplexing with other AMs or leasing to wireless carriers like Verizon or T-Mobile.” Continue Reading

Denver Suffers Because Carriers Won’t Trade Spectrum

Denver has one of the slowest mobile data speeds in the country, experts agree. A combination of more people moving into the area, increasing demand on cell networks, is one reason but the larger reason has to do with spectrum. Of the four companies servicing the area, not one company has a big chunk of spectrum, reports the Denver Post.
 
AllNet Insights & Analytics President Brian Goemmer says T-Mobile owns a good amount of Advanced Wireless Spectrum in Denver, however AT&T and Verizon own portions in-between. By not owning contiguous bands, none of the carriers can offer the top upload and download speeds carriers offer in other cities, according to Goemmer. Continue Reading

AT&T Says Tower Rents Are Not ‘Sustainable’

AT&T is reportedly looking to revise tower lease deals where it can. Letters seen by FierceWireless purport to show AT&T pressing tower operators for new terms, and in some direct language, asking for lower rates.
 
An AT&T spokesman says the company’s execs are “frustrated with the current tower cost structure and believe it is not sustainable.” The letters imply a “no” response or not responding at all will lead to the carrier’s “review of alternate locations.”

The carrier says it’s revaluating the terms and conditions of all leases coming up for renewal; it seeks to reduce or eliminate price increases, “fair” early termination rights, plus the ability to modify or upgrade tower equipment for no extra cost, according to the account. Continue Reading

Charter Joins Rival Comcast in the Wireless Arena

Now Charter Communications wants to be in the wireless business too. The news comes a day after rival Comcast said it plans to invoke a 2011 deal with Verizon and launch a wireless service that would run on a combination of its own WiFi and Verizon’s network by mid-2017, Inside Towers reported yesterday.
 
Charter jumping into the wireless business could mean more competition for Verizon and AT&T, which dominate, reports the AP. Since its purchase of Time Warner Cable in May, Charter is now bigger, claiming 25 million+ customers. In contrast, Comcast has 28+ million. Continue Reading

FCC to Push for Uniform Roaming Standards

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and CCA can trace their roots back to 1992 when Wheeler started as the head of CTIA and CCA first began.  Wheeler opened the annual CCA Convention yesterday in Seattle saying the federal agency is “pursuing an aggressive agenda to seize the opportunities of mobile for rural America.
 
Steven Berry, the President & CEO of CCA concurred: “I agree with the Chairman’s observation that competition is the key to ensuring a robust mobile wireless marketplace for all consumers.  CCA looks forward to continued work with the Commission to ‘form a united front for our mobile future.’”

Continue Reading

Cell Phone Alerts Help Catch Alleged Bomber

Millions of New Yorkers’ cell phones screamed out an air raid siren-like sound yesterday morning flashing a message that said “WANTED.”  The alerts signaled the manhunt for a suspected bomber in the Manhattan blast that occurred on Saturday but also represented the first digital manhunt in New York City.

Along with digital billboards, radio and TV stations, used by law enforcement to alert the public this modern equivalent of a “wanted” poster showed up on everyone’s phone.  TheTwitter alert looked like this:

Continue Reading

FCC Projects 5G Will Take a Ten-Time Growth in Towers and Small Cells

Broadband deployment, and especially 5G infrastructure is key for the nation’s economy, FCC Commissioners told lawmakers at last Thursday’s oversight hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. In what is likely the last time the current makeup of Commissioners will appear before Congress, Chairman Wheeler discussed the Spectrum Frontiers Report and Order, which the agency recently adopted to speed development and deployment of 5G wireless technology.
 
He pledged to “balance the needs of various different types of uses in these bands through effective sharing mechanisms; take steps to promote competitive access to this spectrum; encourage the development of secure networks and technologies from the beginning; and remove unnecessary hurdles to siting and infrastructure deployment.” Continue Reading