AT&T partners with CitySwitch
AT&T continues to look for
alternative
providers of tower sites. While its
tower venture with Verizon
gears up, AT&T is also planning to commission new towers built by CitySwitch, a 14-year-old company that specializes in developing wireless sites for railroad communications equipment. CitySwitch says it has access to sites in 72 of the top 100 wireless markets and will begin building towers for AT&T within the next few months.
The news comes just a couple of weeks after AT&T announced a new contract with tower giant Crown Castle, which will include the right to put FirstNet equipment on Crown Castle's towers, many of which were owned by AT&T until a few years ago. AT&T may still be in negotiations with American Tower and SBAC, and the timing of its announcement with CitySwitch could impact those talks. AT&T said again this week that the traditional tower leasing model is not sustainable, and that it might move equipment from existing tower sites to the new CitySwitch sites.
Verizon capex
Verizon's first quarter capex was $4.6 billion, of which $2.4 billion was wireless spending, $1.7 billion was wireline spending, and $500 million was corporate capex. The company said it expects capital expenditures to be more evenly distributed this year than in previous years, and did not change its overall projection of $17 - 17.8 billion in capital spending for the year.
"The unchanged capex guidance for 2018 continues to lead us to see a modest year-on-year decline in wireless capex in 2Q18-4Q18 vs 2Q17-4Q17, and we consider the Verizon report as negative for wireless exposed vendors CommScope, Ericsson and Nokia," wrote analyst Simon Leopold of Raymond James. Leopold expects to see Verizon's wireline spending increase at the expense of wireless spending in the months ahead.
BDAC meeting today
The FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee is meeting today to consider recommendations from its working groups, including the
Model Code for Municipalities
and the
Model Code for States
. This morning committee members heard from University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Yoo, a fellow BDAC member who is conducting research on pole attachment rates. The committee asked Yoo about the relationship between pole attachment rates, broadband penetration rates, and the price of internet service. Yoo said that the data supplied so far by industry participants has not been sufficient to answer these questions, and that studying this would also require more financial resources. Wireless Infrastructure Association president Jonathan Adelstein said WIA might have access to funding sources, and Vertical Bridge CEO Marc Ganzi said he could offer summary data about more than 20,000 pole attachments.
The BDAC is meant to be a cooperative effort between private industry and government, but it has lost two key government participants recently. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and New York City CTO Miguel Gamino both resigned, saying the committee was too focused on industry priorities.
Small cell market forecast
How many outdoor small cells will be deployed by U.S. service providers, and which vendors will supply them? How do small cells impact towers and macro sites? If you need the answers to these questions, iGR's
Outdoor Small Cells Market Forecast
is a great place to start. Buyers get access to our custom research at no additional cost.
