Qualified CAF II Auction Bidders Revealed

 
More than 200 bidders have been deemed qualified to take part in FCC Auction 903 for Connected America Phase II funding. The auction, set to begin on July 24, will award up to $1.98 billion over 10 years to telecom providers that commit to offer voice and broadband services to fixed locations in unserved high-cost areas.

Large, incumbent carriers like Verizon, Frontier, Cincinnati Bell and U.S. Cellular made the list, as did rural telcos such as Red River Cellular Telephone Corporation. Wireless companies like Skywave Wireless and Surf Air Wireless are on the list. Satellite broadband providers like Hughes Network Systems and Viasat made the cut. So too, did cable companies such as Altice, Cox and Troy Cablevision. Rural electric companies like Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative and Wells Rural Electric Company are on the list, as are several Wireless Internet Service Providers.

When the Commission originally issued the list in May, the agency said only 47 applications were complete and 230 were incomplete. Now, only 57 applications were deemed “not qualified” to bid. Some of the names on that list are: Bay Country Communications, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, the city of Hudson, and the Ohio and Wyoming Mutual Telephone Company. Continue Reading

American Tower vs. CellInfo: Was Proprietary Info Taken?

By Jim Fryer, Managing Editor, Inside Towers
In a motion filed June 15, in a Massachusetts District Court, a small data consulting company, CellInfo, claimed American Tower Corp. (ATC) took their “confidential information and trade secrets for the purpose of unfairly competing with CellInfo and improperly benefiting ATC.” The two companies signed a Master Consulting Services Agreement in January of 2017, but CellInfo claims American started developing its own rudimentary version of their application when they began getting requests from ATC employees for algorithms used in its development.

CellInfo describes itself as a small Massachusetts company, founded in 2014, by two former high-school classmates who built “an innovative asset intelligence platform that provides real-time analysis for strategic and tactical business decisions” for companies in the broadband infrastructure business. ATC had, according to the suit, worked with CellInfo for the past two years and “had tailored [their platform] for ATC’s specific needs” because “they did not have any similar platform or software.”




By retrieving, normalizing and analyzing data from disparate sources both inside and outside of ATC, CellInfo believed that it could “unlock untapped revenues for ATC.”  One of the applications of CellInfo’s data was to “quickly and easily determine whether all equipment installed on a cellular tower is allowed to be there and also determine if equipment installed on the tower exceeds wind loading restrictions.” Continue Reading

AT&T to Transfer Data Center Co-location Operations, Assets to Brookfield

AT&T signed a strategic alliance with Brookfield Infrastructure and its institutional partners to transfer its data center co-location operations and assets to Brookfield. Under Brookfield’s ownership, the business will continue to deliver co-location services to customers in 18 internet data centers in the United States and 13 outside the U.S., according to the carrier. The co-location data center operations serve a customer base of more than 1,000 companies across the technology, financial, industrial, media retail and other sectors.


Under terms of the agreement, AT&T will receive $1.1 billion, which it will use to pay down debt. After the deal closes, expected within six to eight months, customer contracts, employees supporting the co-location operations, fixed assets, leased and owned facilities will transfer to Brookfield. 
Once finalized, AT&T will continue to deliver network services to its customers at the IDCs. AT&T will become a sales channel for the business and will be the anchor tenant of the co-location operations. Continue Reading

“Tower Geeks” From Around the World Meet in “Boca”

 
In a not so veiled swipe at other trade shows (and you know who you are) the promoters at TowerXchange Meetup Americas in Boca this week suggest the Florida event is more focused. “Passive infrastructure is typically hidden away as an under-appreciated small part of a broader show,” is their assessment of the others. Their show, they claim, is a “networking club for tower geeks” attracting 80 to 90 percent “of the CXO’s who lead tower strategy.” While I’m not here to document that personally, the mix of international players in attendance in the macro tower arena is unmistakable.  The international markets are active, alive and open for business. Industry veteran Maria Scotti, CEO of Torrecom, said it is very reminiscent of the old days in the U.S. tower industry. “It’s back to the future!” she said enthusiastically.

Analysis of the CALA telecom infrastructure industry kicked off the conference with a address by Kieron Osmotherly, CEO of TowerXchange.  Taking a global perspective, Osmotherly said commercial tower companies (i.e., non-carrier, utility or government) own 67.4 percent of the world’s towers, with the top 12 owning 56 percent of those. Skewing that number a bit is China Tower, on the cusp of an IPO, holding roughly 1.9 million sites.  However, even active international markets, he cautioned, are “reaching a degree of saturation” as to their acquisition potential. Additional revenue opportunities are being considered and applied, he said, with towercos laying and buying their own cable and the rise of micro data centers. Continue Reading

American Tower’s Vendor Loyalty Oath Extended and Diluted

The blowback from American Tower’s edict to vendors last week requiring complicity in  limiting their work on any site that falls within a half-mile radius of theirs, has prompted the company to bend, ever so slightly, by:

• moving the deadline for signed agreements of compliance to tomorrow
• excluding non-macro towers as a factor
• limiting the sites to those published on their website
• allowing for a site-specific waiver

But to one vendor who wished to remain nameless, “it still does not do enough to walk this situation back. This is an unprecedented power play and the company making it is really damaging their reputation in the marketplace.”
A copy of a letter sent from an American Tower representative, Jared Morley, Director of Supply Chain, to vendors was obtained by Inside Towers over the weekend (reprinted in its entirely):
Continue Reading

Report: Sprint, T-Mobile Rush to File Merger Request at FCC

 
\Sprint and T-Mobile told the FCC they intend to formally file an application asking for merger approval today, Reuters reports. If so, that would be fast on the heels of AT&T closing its acquisition of Time Warner, which was announced Thursday night.

Sprint and T-Mobile filed a document to the Commission asking for a protective order to hide proprietary information from public view, according to Reuters. The two carriers announced an all-stock $26 billion deal in April. Neither carrier immediately responded to a request for comment. Continue Reading

Judge Rules Tower Vendor Owes Employees For Drive Time

An Illinois federal judge signed off on a $333,000 settlement between Heights Tower Service Inc. and nearly 60 of its employees, who accused the company of failing to pay them overtime for the time they spent driving between job sites, reported Law360.

The class action lawsuit was filed in 2014. The workers alleged the company would generally pay employees overtime past their normal 40-hour work week, but failed to include their time spent driving between jobs in overtime calculations. That practice violates Illinois’ Minimum Wage Law as well as the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, Law360 reported. The case had been slated for trial to begin this August, but Tuesday’s decision came following mediation.

According to U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert, the deal will fully compensate the workers for the overtime they said they were due, and is an “excellent result” since it “diverts any risk and uncertainty of litigation to certain result for the class.” He added: “They get the dollars now rather than dollars later, although they may not have gotten the dollars later either.” Continue Reading