American Tower Outlook Bullish on 2Q Performance

By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor

American Tower (NYSE: AMT) is on a roll. The company reported in its 2Q22 earnings call that all key operating metrics were up by either low double-digit or high single-digit percentages. Total property revenue came in at $2.6 billion, up 17 percent over the $2.2 billion in 2Q21. Net income jumped 20 percent YoY to nearly $900 million, Adjusted EBITDA reached $1.7 billion, a 13 percent YoY increase and consolidated AFFO grew 7 percent to $1.2 billion. AMT is a global story that is the sum of its regional parts. The tower company was very active during the quarter, constructing 1,514 new towers, predominantly in India and Africa and acquiring another 118, mainly in Europe. The company also sold or decommissioned 762 poor performing sites in India and Latin America to bring its total tower count to 220,096 at the end of the quarter, an increase of nearly 4 percent from a year ago. This tally makes AMT the largest independent tower company in the world. Continue Reading

Senate Passes Bipartisan Chip Funding Bill

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

UPDATE The Senate passed a bipartisan bill Wednesday that would provide $52 billion in subsidies to domestic semiconductor manufacturers and invest billions in science and technology innovation. The measure is a bid to strengthen the United States’ competitiveness and self-reliance in what is seen as a keystone industry for economic and national security. In a 64-33 vote, the Senate passed the $280 billion “CHIPS and Science Act,” a slimmed-down final iteration of a bill that was years in the making, notes The Washington Post. About $52 billion would go to microchip manufacturers to incentivize construction of domestic semiconductor fabrication plants — or “fabs” — to make the chips, which are used in a variety of products, including cell phones, cars, medical equipment and military weapons. A shortage of semiconductor chips during the coronavirus pandemic has caused price hikes and supply-chain disruptions in several industries. Continue Reading

BAI Acquires ZenFi Networks to Bolster Digital Infrastructure Growth

By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor

BAI Communications (BAI), a global shared communications infrastructure provider based outside Sydney, Australia, has agreed to acquire ZenFi Networks (ZenFi), a U.S. East coast-based provider of digital infrastructure solutions and an innovator in small cell deployment, offload and roaming services, fiber connectivity and network edge colocation. This agreement represents a significant growth opportunity for BAI in North America, building upon its existing connected infrastructure capability and operations of BAI Group’s two U.S.-based companies, Mobilitie and Transit Wireless. The company suggests the deal further advances BAI’s vision to become a leading provider of connected 5G infrastructure across North America and globally.  Once the deal closes, the ZenFi team will join Transit Wireless and Mobilitie representing BAI’s U.S. operations. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory clearances and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Transaction terms were not disclosed. Continue Reading

FBI Concluded Huawei Gear Could Disrupt U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Communications

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

The FBI uncovered efforts by the Chinese government to plant listening devices near sensitive U.S. military and government facilities since 2017, but some of that information is only coming to light now, reports CNN. The FBI investigation pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near U.S. military bases in the rural Midwest.    According to multiple sources, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the country's nuclear weapons. While broad concerns about Huawei communications gear near U.S. military installations have been well known, the existence of this investigation and its findings have never been reported, according to CNN. Its origins stretch back to at least the Obama administration. Continue Reading

Verizon Maintains CapEx Guidance as Service Revenues Wane

By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor

In its heyday, the AT&T Bell System ran ads with the tagline: “The System is the solution!” During his company’s 2Q22 earnings call on Friday, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg echoed similar sentiments. Vestburg reiterated several times his confidence that Verizon’s current and planned wireless and broadband networks will deliver long term growth and profitability. This confidence seemed at odds, however, with the company’s 2Q22 results that showed weak gains in consumer postpaid net adds and significant losses in prepaid net adds, resulting in flat to down quarter-to-quarter wireless service revenues. Verizon certainly is feeling the effects of weak consumer demand due to inflation and competition. The company’s consolidated service revenues were $27.1 billion for the quarter, flat sequentially with 1Q22 and down 4 percent year-over-year from $28.2 billion in 2Q21. Similarly, consolidated Adjusted EBITDA for 2Q22 was $11.9 billion, down over one percent QtQ and down nearly 3 percent YoY from $12.2 billion. Continue Reading

Crown Castle Sees Big Upside in Small Cells

By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor

Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI) expects to deploy about 5,000 small cells by the end of 2022. The company has an inventory of around 115,000 small cells that consists of 55,000 currently operating, or what CCI refers to as “on-air,” and the remaining 60,000 units on the books to be built over the next five years. These small cells are installed as nodes on CCI’s extensive fiber optic network that spans over 85,000 route miles and is concentrated in major U.S. markets. In its 2Q22 earnings call, the company said it will double to 10,000 the number of new small cell installations in 2023. As its mobile network operator tenants complete the lion’s share of their network upgrades to 5G and new mid-band spectrum deployments on macro towers, they will shift their focus to densifying their networks using small cells primarily in the top 30-50 urban markets around the U.S., where CCI is particularly well positioned. Continue Reading

Crown Castle International Corp. to Change Name to Crown Castle Inc.

When announcing its 2022 second quarter report yesterday afternoon, Crown Castle led off by saying it plans to change its corporate name to Crown Castle Inc., effective August 1, 2022. Its common stock will continue to trade under the ticker symbol "CCI" on the New York Stock Exchange.

"We delivered another solid quarter of growth in the second quarter and once again increased our operating expectations for the full year 2022," said Jay Brown, Crown Castle’s Chief Executive Officer. "Consistent with the last couple of decades, it is clear to us that the U.S. represents the highest growth and lowest risk market in the world for communications infrastructure ownership. We are busy supporting our customers as they have begun to upgrade their existing cell sites and deploy thousands of new sites on our macro towers as part of the first phase of the 5G build out, which drove 6 percent organic revenue growth in our Towers segment through the first half of this year.” Continue Reading

Digital Infrastructure Has Come of Age for Investors

By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor

In the past, infrastructure capital was not part of funding wireless infrastructure, but capital is now pouring into digital infrastructure and transactions are happening at an accelerated pace. That was what Steven Sonnenstein, Senior Managing Director at DigitalBridge Investment Management, told the audience last week at the TowerXchange Meetup Americas 2022 in West Palm Beach, FL. The popularity of digital infrastructure has evolved from the maturation of the tower business model and technological convergence. 5G has necessitated that both towers and small cells use fiber for connectivity. Additionally, the need for low latency depends on strategically located edge computing. Continue Reading

These Carriers Get First Rip & Replace Reimbursement Priority

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

UPDATE A total of 85 entities are considered “first priority” in the FCC’s Rip & Replace reimbursement program. Several providers filed multiple applications. Congress initially allocated $1.9 billion to reimburse carriers for removing untrusted gear from Huawei and ZTE from their networks. To fund all “reasonable and supported” cost estimates within the first prioritization group and cover administrative expenses, the reimbursement program will require $4.7 billion, reflecting a current shortfall of $2.8 billion, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Congress, Inside Towers reported. Continue Reading

TowerXchange Exclusive Coverage Phoenix Tower International Growing By Leaps and Bounds

By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor

Phoenix Tower International has come out of the COVID-19 pandemic with a lot more towers and more capital. That was the upbeat assessment Dagan Kasavana gave of PTI over the last two years in a fireside chat with Natalia Gorohova, TowerXchange Head of Research - Americas, during last week’s TowerXchange Meetup Americas 2022 in West Palm Beach, FL. The CEO discussed PTI’s journey as it transformed itself through a global tower buying spree. Earlier this month, PTI acquired up to 3,800 towers from WOM, an MNO in Chile. Before that, it acquired 202 towers in the U.S. from Tower Ventures Holdings III, LLC and over 3,200 towers from Cellnex Telecom in France. Last year, it acquired 830 towers from Monaco Telecom across Malta and Cyprus (plus newly constructed towers for six years in a build-to-suit program) and 203 towers in the French West Indies from Outremer Telecom. In 2020, PTI picked up leasing rights to 2,400 towers in Italy, 600 towers in Ireland, and 4,000 towers in France, as well as nearly 200 more towers in the U.S. Continue Reading

TowerXchange Exclusive Coverage Out of the Blue, DigitalBridge Captures Germany’s Crown Jewel Tower Portfolio

By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor

Despite press reports that KKR was the last bidder in the running, DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE: DBRG) seemingly came out of nowhere yesterday to join with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (NYSE: BIP) to acquire a 51 percent ownership stake in Deutsche Telekom’s GD Towers. The transaction, valued at $17.5 billion, included 40,000+ sites in Germany and Austria.  Cellnex Telecom, which was aligned with Brookfield, withdrew its offer to acquire a stake in Deutsche Telekom’s tower portfolio, which reportedly left a consortium led by KKR as the sole bidder for the assets, as previously reported by Inside Towers. But when Cellnex bowed out, DigitalBridge stepped in and teamed up with Brookfield and won the bid. Continue Reading

DigitalBridge and Brookfield to Acquire 51 Percent Stake in GD Towers

DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE: DBRG) today announced that funds affiliated with its investment management arm together with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (NYSE: BIP) and its institutional partners have reached an agreement to acquire a 51 percent ownership stake in GD Towers. The transaction values GD Towers, the mobile telecommunications tower business of Deutsche Telekom AG (XETR: DTE), at $17.5 billion including the assumption of net debt. According to Deutsche Telekom, the transaction is expected to close towards the end of this year with the company expecting cash proceeds of around $10.7 billion, including debt of $4.1 billion. At the end of March, the carrier’s debt was around $136 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The partnership being formed today is about building the next generation digital infrastructure champion of Europe,” said Marc Ganzi, CEO of DigitalBridge. “The combination of Deutsche Telekom’s leading mobile network and market position, alongside one of the largest real asset managers in the world in Brookfield, combined with the digital infrastructure domain expertise of DigitalBridge, creates a team of unmatched capabilities to support GD Towers as it grows to meet the evolving network demands of enterprises and consumers across Europe.” Continue Reading

Zayo Launches State-of-the-Art Undersea Cable in Europe

By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor

Zayo Group, the fiber network operator based in Boulder, CO, has launched its new subsea cable route, dubbed Zeus, connecting the U.K. and continental Europe via access points in Lowestoft, U.K. and Zandvoort, Netherlands. The undersea route includes terrestrial backhaul connectivity from those access points to the key London and Amsterdam markets. Zeus is purpose-built to connect with 10 primary cloud on-ramps and over 80 data centers between these core markets via Zayo’s extensive European terrestrial network. Zayo engineered Zeus to be the most dense, deeply-buried and robust cable available in the North Sea. The Zeus cable is 100 percent double armored and contains 192 separate fiber strands, the highest fiber count of any cable connecting the U.K. and mainland Europe. It utilizes Corning’s SMF-28 ultra-low loss (ULL) optical fibers and has an optical wavelength throughput of up to 600 Gbps on a single channel between London and Amsterdam using dense wave division multiplexing systems. Continue Reading

And the Bidders Who Qualified for the 2.5 GHz Auction Are…

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

The FCC says 82 applicants are qualified to bid in Auction 108, the auction of flexible use overlay licenses in the 2.5 GHz band. Bidding is slated to begin July 29.   The agency reviewed short-form applications (FCC Form 175) for completeness and compliance with its rules. The list of those who qualified (attachment A) includes big names like AT&T Auction Holdings, LLC, T-Mobile License LLC, and UScellular Corporation. Smaller telecoms qualify as well, like Granite Wireless LLC, Michigan Wireless, LLC and SkyPacket Networks. The list indicates whether applicants claimed eligibility for a small business or rural service bidding credit. Continue Reading

Nebraska to Hold Reverse Auction for Broadband Funds

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

A new reverse auction by the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) will allow telecommunication companies to bid on funds, reports the Star Herald. The PSC’s order, NUSF-131, sets the procedure for the reverse auction to bring broadband services of at least 100 Mbps to certain census blocks in the state. The affected areas are primarily in northeast and south-central Nebraska. This will be a first-of-its-kind effort for a state to pull off. “The FCC has done a couple reverse auctions, but to my knowledge, we’re the first state who’s tried to do one,” Cullen Robbins, the PSC’s director of telecommunications, told the Star-Herald. Continue Reading

TIM to Break Vertically Integrated Operations into Value-Added Parts

By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor

During its Capital Market Day yesterday, TIM, the big Italian telecom operator, headquartered in Rome, tabled a plan to separate its network infrastructure assets (referred to as NetCo) from its services delivery operations (ServiceCo). The company suggests such a transformation recognizes that the TIM Group operates in “an intensely competitive market yet is constrained by one of the most stringent regulatory frameworks in Europe.”  By breaking up the classical vertically integrated telco model, TIM hopes its regulated and unregulated businesses on their own will become more competitive and more profitable in their respective operations. Here’s how TIM is planning the breakup. Continue Reading

USDA Seeks More Time to Apply “Buy American” to Infrastructure Law

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

The USDA is seeking a waiver of the “Buy American” provision of the Infrastructure Law.  It says the provision could delay several rural infrastructure projects, including construction and broadband deployment.   The USDA seeks six months of extra time (to October 2023) for its ReConnect program, specifically for iron/steel, manufactured products and construction materials. The ReConnect Program offers loans, grants, and loan-grant combinations to facilitate broadband deployment in rural areas that don't have sufficient access to broadband.    According to the USDA, the Infrastructure Law requires projects receiving federal infrastructure funding to use products and materials which contain at least 55 percent domestic content. Congress intended implementation of the provision on May 14. Continue Reading

FCC Authorizes SpaceX to Provide Mobile Starlink Internet Service

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

The FCC authorized SpaceX to provide Starlink satellite internet to vehicles in motion. “Authorizing a new class of [customer] terminals for SpaceX’s satellite system will expand the range of broadband capabilities to meet the growing user demands that now require connectivity while on the move, whether driving an RV across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight,” FCC International Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan wrote in the authorization. It also approved a request from Kepler Communications Inc. to operate unlimited Ku-band Earth Stations on Vessels. Starlink is SpaceX’s network of satellites in low-Earth orbit, designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere on the globe. SpaceX has launched about 2,700 satellites to support the global network. As of May, SpaceX told the FCC that Starlink had more than 400,000 subscribers, according to MSNBC. Continue Reading

New Entrants to the Arctic Freeze-Out Current Broadband Offerings

Due to the high cost of last-mile broadband infrastructure, the Arctic has largely been left out of the loop. CircleID reported that historically, Iridium Communications had offered low-bandwidth connections and was the only option available. However, additional satellite broadband providers —  Starlink, OneWeb, Telesat, SES, The Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM), and The Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) —  are entering the market to spur competition. 

Starlink and OneWeb already have polar-orbiting satellites in place to serve the area. Telesat has partnered with the Canadian government to connect to indigenous communities, reported CircleID. The deal brings $690 million in preferred equity, $790 million in loans, and $400 million from the Quebec government to Telesat Lightspeed to complete its low-orbit satellite constellation, which will begin with 298 satellites to deliver speeds up to a gigabit across Canada. Continue Reading

Franklin Would Have Loved Wireless

By Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor

Justly credited as being one of the most American Americans to ever walk on this planet, Benjamin Franklin had an eye for invention, creativity, irreverence of the status quo and love of challenging the unknown. He would have been fascinated by the wireless industry and, no doubt, given time, would come up with an application we never thought of. The guy invented the lightning rod, for goodness sakes, and, to this day, his invention protects your towers. Think of the sheer audacity of the man. To feel like you could take on Zeus himself and bring his thunderbolts under control is not only the height of hubris but the essence of a truly American mind at work. We can change anything, is the American mantra, from royal rule to fuzzy vision. He is at rest here in my beloved Philadelphia at the corner of 5th and Arch. His marble slab is almost touching distance through the iron fence. Almost. So instead, people pitch pennies on the slab to commemorate his “Penny saved is a penny got” quote (he never said “earned.”) No doubt, he would rather everyone keep their pennies. Continue Reading