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Cell Tower News: American Tower buys Verizon towers for $5B

by Jarad Matula February 5, 2015

written by Jarad Matula February 5, 2015

Verizon tower sale confirmed

Earlier this week we reported the possibility of Verizon Communications selling $15 billion worth of its portfolio to make up for all the money spent in the recent spectrum auction. This sale has now been confirmed, with American Tower entering into a definitive agreement to acquire the rights to $5.056 billion worth of Verizon’s tower portfolio. This amount of money is equal to 11,324 wireless communication towers. The terms of this agreement include American Tower having the exclusive right to lease and operate the Verizon towers for about 28 years. American Tower will also have purchase options for the towers, which will be based on the fair market value of the towers at the end of the lease. Goldman Sachs will help with financing for the deal, which should close during the first half of 2015.

“Demand for mobile bandwidth by U.S. consumers is expanding dramatically as the proliferation of advanced devices and applications continues. As evidenced by the just-concluded AWS spectrum auction, the big four domestic carriers plan to address this growth with significant ongoing investment in both spectrum and their physical networks. We believe that by aggressively marketing these relatively underutilized towers to additional tenants, we will enable faster deployment of this spectrum, accelerating the expansion of broadband coverage throughout the U.S.,” said Jim Taiclet, American Tower’s CEO.

Translation: He’s doing a happy dance with dollar signs in his eyes at the future returns on this investment. It’s a great deal for both parties, and each should be pleased with their role in it.

Verizon’s tower portfolio will give American Tower the largest wireless communications real estate portfolio in the U.S. with a total of over 40,000 towers. The company’s international portfolio is close 100,000 towers.

But that’s not all. Verizon also spent another $10 billion on the wireline side of things, click here to read more about that.

Cell tower lightning eliminators

Lightning is one of the most awe-inspiring and dangerous forms nature takes. It’s especially dangerous for those working on towers, as their job involves working on something that could potentially serve as a huge lightning rod. Did you know there are instruments that prevent that? According to those who work on the product, it releases ions that dissipate the opposite charge that lightning requires to be attracted to an object. Not trying to give a product bump here, it’s just the science of it is worth noting.

Just for fun, here’s a great video of lightning strikes: