Payment is part of new LightSquared restructuring plan
Three years into a bankruptcy filing, would-be wireless network operator LightSquared this week laid out a plan that would repay investor Charles Ergen, chairman of Dish Network, $1.5 billion.
LightSquared raised significant financing for its plan to offer...
NATE Unite celebrates 20th anniversary
This week was the 20th anniversary of the National Association of Tower Erectors' conference NATE Unite. This annual event sees people from all over come together to discuss the wireless infrastructure industry. In recent years, the focus has become safety, especially...
American Tower now earns more than half its revenue outside the United States. The company reported fourth-quarter domestic rental and management revenue of $681 million (up 9.3%) and international rental and management revenue of $349 million (up 15.9%). Earnings before depreciation, interest and taxes...
Paarl, South Africa - Atlas Tower builds first towers inSouth Africa. Atlas Tower, a successful Colorado - based company that owns and operates communication towers in 11 US states, announced successful completion of its first seven towers in South Africa. With thirteen more in Construction and...
Ntelos sells 85 towers
Grain Management announced the closing of a deal to acquire 85 towers from Ntelos Holdings. The towers are said to be worth $2.2 million in cash flow, though the exact cost of the transaction has yet to be disclosed. This deal...
Tower companies are adding capacity to cellular networks by co-locating more than one carrier per tower, and many towers are feeling the strain. In addition, LTE architectures place electronics at the tops of towers instead of on the ground, further adding to the weight at...
Crown Castle owns Down Under footprint of 1,800 towers
Cellular infrastructure giant Crown Castle is considering a sale of its Australian tower assets, which comprise some 1,800 towers that support carriers Optus, Telstra and Vodafone Hutchison Australia.
The company announced that it is exploring a sale...
PAARL, SOUTH AFRICA – Atlas Tower, a successful Colorado-based company that owns and operates communication towers in 11 U.S. states, announced successful completion of its first seven towers in South Africa. With 13 more in construction and expected to be completed by April, Atlas is in a...
América Móvil's tower move in Mexico
All may be quiet on the American tower front after last week's big move from American Tower, but this week Latin American mobile operator América Móvil provided an update on its plans to spin its tower interests off into its own...
WOW Business drops more fiber in Chicago
Dallas, Texas-based PEG Bandwidth this week fired up fiber backhaul services to its 2,000th cell site since activating the first location in March 2010.
The company is busy deploying fiber backhaul connections at “several hundred” more locations in the...
Sites for small cell, Wi-Fi, towers
Melody Wireless Infrastructure on Jan. 26 announced the acquisition of 908 locations. The relatively new independent wireless infrastructure player controls more than 2,000 locations nationwide.
Greenwich, Conn.-based Melody Wireless, part of financing firm Melody Capital Partners, completed the transaction with...
Senate questions legality of 'stingrays'
Two senators are launching an official inquiry into the legality of the FBI and other government agencies' use of "stingrays," also known as fake cell towers or IMSI catchers. If you need a refresher on the topic, look here and...
Editor’s Note: Looking to bring a younger perspective to the mobile space, RCR Wireless News has tapped Jeff Hawn to provide insight into what’s on the minds of the tech-savvy youth of today.
The giants of American wireless, AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile US and...
Tech research firm Ovum is forecasting telecom capital expenditures over the next five years will top $2 trillion.
In the United States, Ovum tallied some $364 billion in capex this year with mobile operators accounting for 59% of that spending and fixed-communications service providers making...
Vertical Bridge buys over $500M worth of towers
The holiday shopping spree continues this week. Last week it was American Tower buying up towers. This week Vertical Bridge struck two large deals to increase their tower portfolio. The first is with U.S. Cellular, where they entered...
China’s three mobile carriers have created a new company, China Tower, which will take over ownership of the three firms’ telecom infrastructure while ambitiously planning to build 1 million new towers in the next two years.
Instead of the three companies individually building towers, the...
An Arizona-based company is working with major wireless infrastructure player Crown Castle to strengthen three Southern California towers using an innovative new product.
QuakeWrap Inc. founder Mo Ehsani, professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Arizona, told RCR Wireless News that one of...
American Tower has agreed to buy Bharti Airtel's Nigerian towers for just over $1 billion. The holding company for Bharti Airtel's African operations will sell 4,800 towers to American Tower and then lease them back. The deal will help Bharti Airtel reduce its debt...
American Tower is expanding its tower portfolio in Brazil with the purchase of more than 6,400 towers from Telecom Italia's TIM Cellular for roughly $1.2 billion. Of the 6,400-plus towers, 1,240 are subject to certain preemptive acquisition rights held by third parties.
The company expects the new...
FirstNet receives $7 billion funding
FirstNet, you're one of the first good things to come out of government funds in a while. To understand what FirstNet is, why it's so important and how it will affect the tower industry, let's look at a scary example...
An estimated one in eight LTE operators have commercially launched TD-LTE networks, changing the landscape of antennas.
"They have 65-degree multiband, multibeam antennas. We see those progressing to higher and higher port count as part of the evolution of antennas on the tower top," Ray Butler,...
Boca Raton, Fla.-based SBA Communications (SBAC) announced third fiscal quarter total revenue of $393.3 million, beating the tower company’s estimate of $385.6 million.
That growth was driven by the 2012 purchase of 2,300 tower sites in the United States and Central America, along with acquisition...
NATE joins FCC safety workshop
Two months ago the FCC announced that it would host a tower climber safety and injury prevention workshop in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14. An industry event this huge seems like something the National Association of Tower Erectors (NATE) would...
OSHA fatalities, safety report available on web
Big changes in OSHA's transparency and reporting are underway. For a variety of reasons, people want access to all of the reported job site fatalities and injuries at work sites. You could find this previously by combing through...
