We got a letter recently from somebody saying they represent a cell company looking to erect a tower on some land we own. Any tips? Anything I need to be aware of before establishing contact with this person? Any idea of going rates and length of lease?

Thanks.

Thanks for the questions. Evidently this is just a rep, and not a direct company contact. I can't tell if it's someone fishing for a set of locations to offer a cell company, or if they're genuinely representing one, having zero experience in this area. I figure the more I know before talking to them, the better.

One thing I'd want would be a stipulation that they remove everything when they abandon it unless you agree at that time to leave it. And maybe some kind of stipulation about how long it can sit there without them using it before it is declared abandoned.

The reason I say that is that there are a number of old telephone company microwave towers around that are now abandoned. They are too expensive to dismantle and so they just sit there.

In one that I know of out in the country, there was a building by the tower and the owner uses that now to store livetock feed. The tower itself is pretty useless now, though.

Our church recently got one put in the back corner of the property. They accepted a lump payment for a perpetual easement as opposessed to the annual lease.

Any idea what they got?

id do it and take the annual payment. Fund another 529/trust for the kiddos

Many thanks for all the replies.

I try and avoid access at all costs.

If you do lease I would hold the amount of land to a minimum. If they need 30x30' I wouldn't give 100x100' and/or I wouldn't allow them the ability to sublease for another tower to another company.

Several years ago I was in your exact situation. The company wanted a 75'x75' spot on a corner of my property. We negotiated a great deal. Over 30 years I was going to net over 400K. The contract had a 6 month period before it went "hard". (They could back out during this time) Two weeks before the end of this 6 months I got a letter stating the contract would not go forward. The amount of money I received to this point almost covered what I spent with my lawyer negotiating this contract. Right now if I was to get up and walk to my front porch I could see in the distance the blinking red light on top of the tower that is located on my neighbors property just on the other side of my property line. I get the view and no benefit. I learned a bunch during this time.

That's the risk you run. We always have multiple options in play. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

sunchaser- not sure what you mean about not allowing access? That's generally a non-negotiable item. We either get 24/7 access or we go elsewhere.

And as for the subleasing that's a different issue. We'll often pay revenue share for additional subtenants- like say AT&T is our anchor tenant and Verizon wants to come on the tower we might pay 25% of what Verizon is paying us to the landlord.

But those deals are probably less than 30% of what's done and if a landlord pushes too hard on it we'll go elsewhere.

Finn, if you have anything going on around Baylor and archer county, I'd be glad to house a tower or two!

techno - like Finn, been in the industry for 18 years. Feel free to ping me if you have more questions.

whrtexas@yahoo.com

Is it ever possible to negotiate a deal to get a nice internet drop or unlimited use of the tower without data caps, basically work it in to replace satellite internet or some such?

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Is it ever possible to negotiate a deal to get a nice internet drop or unlimited use of the tower without data caps, basically work it in to replace satellite internet or some such?

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Not anymore.

But it wasn't uncommon in leases from back in the early days of cell towers to see the landlord get free cell phone or home phone coverage. It think it's generally seen as too much of hassle to deal with these days.

From what I understand, if you're too close to the cell tower, you can't pick up a signal from it anyway.

Typed up two responses this morning that my iPad "ate" but Finn has already covered much of it anyway. Unless your location is so unique that no other site will do, you can assume the tower company is negotiating with your neighbors simultaneously to find/make the very best deal they can. Hard to know where your site ranks by comparison. (And Finn ain't gonna tell ya!)

I inherited a tower and lease on some property I bought 9 years ago, which causes me to have an interest in the subject/thread. My tower is on I-10, and was the first in the area, but there are now two more within a half mile of it. What I've been able to learn about the industry is that the technology is ever changing/improving, such that many of the existing towers will not be in use in the near future as consolidation occurs.

Wonder if Finn and Urban agree with that assessment?

I think the church got about $230,000 for the perpetual easement. The property is on a ridge within the city limits, so it might have made it more valuable.

Finn....

My access remark is personal in that I always have concerns granting it. If you have anything that the outdoor board desires on your place you will have to deal with the people abusing it that have access. Cell towers would be on the low end of the scale since they aren't there very often but do have 24/7 rights..

The other point was the sub leasing. If the agreement doesn't allow subleasing then acerage is not a factor. I was just saying if the company only needs 300 sqft for a tower...lease that....don't lease 1,000 sqft and see it subleased to another company down the road.

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I inherited a tower and lease on some property I bought 9 years ago, which causes me to have an interest in the subject/thread. My tower is on I-10, and was the first in the area, but there are now two more within a half mile of it. What I've been able to learn about the industry is that the technology is ever changing/improving, such that many of the existing towers will not be in use in the near future as consolidation occurs.

Wonder if Finn and Urban agree with that assessment?

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No, I don't agree.

In terms of technology the industry generally assumes that the towers will be there for another 100 years.

Now, that changes if the tower is a single-tenant and that tenant has been bought by a larger carrier (such as AT&T buying Cricket, Sprint buying Nextel & Clearwire, and T-Mobile buying MetroPCS) and there's redundancy in coverage.

There's more to it but I'm on an iPad and a lot to type so I'll explain that tomorrow.

As for the pricing for perpetual easements that requires more finance talk that is a pain to type on an iPad so I'll address that tomorrow as well.

And I'll address sunchaser's post re: access & subleasing too.

Many thanks to Finn and all y'all for the quality responses on this thread.

How much land do tower operators typically need for one of these projects?

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How much land do tower operators typically need for one of these projects?

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Varies by style of tower. I'm not an expert, and hopefully they will follow up, but it seems the newer ones require a very small footprint. Only hundreds of square feet. Mine was erected in '96 with a guy-wire system that occupies a couple of acres of land, plus an access road. I've seen some pretty tall ones without guy wires.

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Finn....

My access remark is personal in that I always have concerns granting it. If you have anything that the outdoor board desires on your place you will have to deal with the people abusing it that have access. Cell towers would be on the low end of the scale since they aren't there very often but do have 24/7 rights..

The other point was the sub leasing. If the agreement doesn't allow subleasing then acerage is not a factor. I was just saying if the company only needs 300 sqft for a tower...lease that....don't lease 1,000 sqft and see it subleased to another company down the road.

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I see.

We generally prefer to be immediately adjacent to a ROW or some other previously defined access road. But part of any deal is an easement for access/utilities to the tower site. If we can't get that there's no point in leasing space on that property.

As to the subleasing, generally every single carrier on a tower is a sublease. We (and other operators) go to the landowners and execute a ground lease with the landowner, build the tower and then sublease space on the tower to the various carriers. That's how we generate revenue. It's not at all uncommon to see one tower with AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint on the same tower.

If you're thinking of one tower company leasing 1000sf for their tower and then turning around to then sublease space to another carrier for another tower that doesn't happen and really can't due to zoning, permitting, and signal interference not to mention the structural limitations. Plus, we're not going to do something to directly benefit our competitor and jeopardize our relationship with our customers (eg- the carriers).

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How much land do tower operators typically need for one of these projects?

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Varies by style of tower. I'm not an expert, and hopefully they will follow up, but it seems the newer ones require a very small footprint. Only hundreds of square feet. Mine was erected in '96 with a guy-wire system that occupies a couple of acres of land, plus an access road. I've seen some pretty tall ones without guy wires.

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It completely depends on the tower style. Our sort of default setting is 10,000sf for a leased premises or compound area. In reality, a tower's profitability is more limited by the space on the ground than anything because the antennae hanging off of the tower are a relatively small component. It's the equipment in the cabinets & bunkers on the ground which take up the most space and often limit capacity. Especially with fiber-optic cables replacing coax because fiber can carry far more data than coax of a similar diameter and you're able to run smaller fiber than coax reducing the weight load on the tower.

Guyed towers are far more common in rural areas where land is more available but also because they need to transmit further.

Cell towers transmit signals on line-of-sight so elevation is required to gain distance. And the amount of data antennae on a tower can transmit is inversely proportional to the distance it can cover. Meaning that if a tower has to serve only 1000 people using a typical data/voice load then that tower might have a coverage radius of 5 miles. But if that tower has to serve 100,000 people using similar per capita data/voice loads then it might only cover 1 mile. Now, these numbers are completely pulled out of my ass but it illustrates the concept. RF engineers who are far smarter than I am can probably quantify this specifically but I can't.

Just my $0.02....I worked for municipalities before retiring and they strongly encouraged co-location....to discourage proliferation of towers. I also worked very early in the cell business surveying, zoning and platting cell tower sites. The only client I can remember was MetroCell....who didn't last very long. We went to some really remote places to survey tower sites.

Maybe I mis-read but wouldn't a rural guyed tower require more than 10,000 sqft? It a all dependent on height but I would think a 400'+ tower would be much greater land area - but maybe you treat that separately I never did the actual site acq side

[edit] just saw the 10k reference was for compound

Finn, would like to visit with you off-line. Please contact me.

It's a small world.

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Finn, if you have anything going on around Baylor and archer county, I'd be glad to house a tower or two!

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Make it Archer County and i'll undercut gkaggie08!

nm

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Finn, if you have anything going on around Baylor and archer county, I'd be glad to house a tower or two!

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AT&T needs to get some towers up in Archer County. Anytime you are near Archer City, the service completely drops out. BTW, gkaggie, do you lease land around there or live in the area?