DISH Signs Long-Term, Undisclosed Agreement With Crown

 With yesterday’s joint announcement of a long-term lease agreement by DISH and Crown Castle (CCI), analysts are viewing it as a plus not just for the participants, but the tower industry in general. DISH will lease space on up to 20,000 towers from CCI nationwide and, in turn, receive fiber transport services with the option to utilize Crown Castle for pre-construction services. No specific financial terms were given but in September, T-Mobile signed a 15-year deal with American Tower for an estimated $17 billion. 

“We view this deal as positive for CCI and for the tower sector more broadly,” said Spencer Kurn at New Street Research. “CCI accounts for 30 percent of the US tower market, which could suggest that DISH intends to install equipment on 65,000 sites if DISH’s network build is evenly distributed across the tower companies. We suspect this announcement implies that DISH will prioritize CCI towers wherever they have a choice, which could mean that CCI captures a greater share of DISH’s cell sites,” Kurn said. “Still, it seems that DISH plans to build to more than the 50,000 that we had assumed for their initial phase, so all of the towers are likely better off than we initially expected.” Continue Reading