CrownCastle
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AT&T and Verizon team up to build hundreds of new cell towers
Verizon and AT&T announced today that they will be jointly constructing hundreds of new cell towers across the US. Tillman Infrastructure will build the towers -- designed for both companies' use -- and together Verizon and AT&T will lease them. "It is imperative to reduce operating costs," Verizon's Chief Network Officer, Nicola Palmer, said in a statement. "We are reviewing all of our long-term contracts as they come up for renewal and we are excited to develop new vendor partners to diversify our infrastructure providers."
UK regulators approve Vodafone and O2's network merger
Observing the mantra that the enemy of its enemy is its friend, Vodafone and O2 have gained regulatory approval to begin merging their cellular networks to better compete with Everything Everywhere. As such, they can begin spinning off infrastructure and towers to a new company called CTI, which will manage both company's hardware as a single network. It's hoped the new tie-up will cover 98 percent of the country and enable LTE services to roll out two years ahead of Ofcom's 2017 deadline. Worried about another awkward T-Mobile and Orange-style merger? Don't be, since in every other respect, the pair have pledged to operate as competing entities in a quest for your custom.
T-Mobile leases 7,200 mobile towers to Crown Castle in a 28-year, $2.4 billion deal
T-Mobile's just received a hefty cash boost thanks to a tower-leasing agreement it's entered into with Crown Castle. The deal leases 7,200 wireless towers to the infrastructure firm for a term of 28 years in exchange for $2.4 billion -- that T-Mobile's parent Deutsche Telekom will use to pay off debt. As part of the contract, Crown Castle can buy the towers outright when the deal ends in 2040 for a further $2.4 billion -- and is planning to make money by adding another tenant to T-Mobile's system, so depending on your carrier, you might find your coverage suddenly getting a lot better.
Tower owners, FCC musing over how to stop taking out birds
Cell towers have obviously always been a danger to aircraft and the occasional light changer or BASE jumper, but the FCC's been facing scrutiny from environmental groups for years over the risks towers pose to another group of fliers: birds. A February court battle brought against the feds by the American Bird Conservancy -- dealing specifically with the threat of so-called "tower kill" on migratory birds in the Gulf region -- saw a ruling demanding that the FCC finally get down to business and come up with a game plan for dealing with the threat that cell sites pose to birds, particularly at night. Naturally, there's still some hemming and hawing, legal wrangling, and wringing of hands going on amongst tower owners and their allies, largely over concerns that the ruling's going to lead to denied and delayed applications for new tower construction. Apparently no one's bothered to teach those little guys what the red lights mean?[Via textually.org]
Crown Castle leases Modeo's airwaves
With AT&T and Verizon both selecting MediaFLO for their mobile TV needs, T-Mobile unable to make up its mind, and Sprint backing off, hopes seem to be fading that DVB-H-based Modeo will secure a deal with one of the national carriers here -- and accordingly, parent Crown Castle is looking to stem its losses. The company has announced that it has leased Modeo's bandwidth -- you know, the stuff it needs to actually offer a mobile TV service -- to two venture capital firms for $13 million a year, with an option to renew the lease for another 10 years or acquire the spectrum outright in 2013. How the firms intend to use their new found airwaves remains unknown, but unless Hiwire stays in this thing, there's a very real possibility that Qualcomm's going to be running unopposed in the mobile entertainment race this side of the pond.
Hiwire to compete with MediaFlo, Modeo's DVB-H
Another major player has joined Qualcomm and Crown Castle with plans to enter a nascent mobile TV market whose future is wildly uncertain. Aloha Partners L.P. will ultimately spend $500 million to roll out its Hiwire service nationwide on the 700MHz spectrum, which it will share with Qualcomm's MediaFlo, and which is considered superior to the 1600MHz spectrum owned by Crown subsidiary Modeo. However, Hiwire will join Modeo in adopting the DVB-H standard for mobile TV, as opposed to the proprietary MediaFlo technology that will be embedded into CDMA handsets. With Verizon already committed to offering the Qualcomm tech to its customers, Hiwire will need to partner with either Cingular or T-Mobile if it expects to gain a similar foothold in the GSM market, and even then, its success will largely be based on consumers' willingness to adopt a service that so far they have shown little interest in.[Via MobileTracker]
