As the bigger tower companies gobble up tower sites across the country, TrinTel Communications Inc. is building its business on filling in the gaps and constructing new sites to lease back or sell to carriers.
Founded in July 1998, TrinTel is comprised of three subsidiaries, including SDS Wireless Inc., which delivers site acquisition, entitlement and construction management services; Trinity Wireless Services Inc., which offers site construction and maintenance; and Trinity Wireless Towers Inc., a build-to-suit tower ownership and management services company.
TrinTel’s niche markets are in the Midwest, Texas, Louisiana and the Pacific Northwest, said John W. Day, chairman and chief executive officer of TrinTel.
“Our customer base asked us to go there and we found those regions not as competitive as many regions in the Northeast and Southeast,” Day said.
Even though TrinTel is a smaller, privately held company, it competes against major public tower companies such as American Tower Corp. and Crown Castle International Corp. Day said it is able to stay competitive because it is the largest of its kind in its territories, and its smaller size gives it more flexibility than the larger companies.
“We can deliver one product at one time on short notice to carriers who need to have sites up and running,” said Day. “Because we’ve started later in the game, we have to be very careful in abiding by time lines.”
TWT has 170 towers in operation, only 10 of which were acquired. The company has a backlog right now of about 450 towers, and it is building towers at a rate of one tower per business day.
“We have strong demand for our services. We’re being asked to open up some other markets, but we don’t want to go to market for just one carrier … so we’re looking at a couple of markets that look interesting. Really our niche is in providing services to affiliates and larger national carriers,” Day explained.
TrinTel works for 25 to 30 different carriers. The company’s customers can request services from one or all of TrinTel’s subsidiaries, although Day said many of the affiliates request end-to-end services.
The company, based in Irving, Texas, was established by Day and another partner. At that time TWS was the core business and it did mostly tower construction for Nextel Communications Inc. and Omnipoint Communications Inc. TrinTel today has about 200 employees.
