Tower marketing and licensing firm KGI Wireless Inc. added 363 tower sites from Time Warner Cable to its portfolio, pushing its count of managed sites to more than 7,000.
Earlier this year, KGI snagged a multi-year deal to manage Alltel Corp.’s 3,000 wireless tower sites, marking the first time a domestic wireless carrier selected a company to oversee the marketing and licensing of its national tower inventory, KGI noted.
Privately held KGI has been marketing towers and managing real estate for some 20 years and recently unveiled Brand Spanking New Towers, a new marketing tool designed to maximize collocation revenue for new tower owners. The company said its BSN tower campaign uses a combination of online and offline advertising aimed at site acquisition managers.
“We developed a marketing program for new builds because these sites offer specific benefits to wireless providers searching for tower space including all new steel, long-term licensing, prime locations in high-growth areas and the ready availability of documents because of recent site construction,” said Scott Greenwell, principal of KGI.
Mike Kampen, another principal at KGI, said the company’s future depends on how well it can meet the evolving needs of its clients as they look to secure tower space in order to keep data and video-centric subscribers connected. “We believe there is a minimum of 25,000 to 30,000 tower sites that could be marketed by us-in addition to all the new emerging vertical markets-and we intend to make that happen.”
Earlier this month, SBA Communications Corp. struck an $18 million agreement with regional wireless carrier SunCom Holdings Inc. to buy 69 towers located throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and eastern Tennessee. SBA’s deal with SunCom spells the end of the operator’s U.S. presence in the tower industry. SunCom still owns sites in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
