The history of Broadcast Towers Inc., a modestly sized tower services company, offers an account of the tower industry’s past and suggests a different path the the future.
Ben Gaboury, Ron Lipham and Michael Kerwick have more in common than sitting at the helm of BTI. The three, all previous corporate officers at the former Pinnacle Towers (now Global Signal Inc.), have known each other for 15 years.
Furthermore, before they became cohorts at Pinnacle, Gaboury, Lipham and Kerwick each put in 18 years of experience at Motorola Inc.
The Gaboury/Lipham/Kerwick team first crossed paths with BTI in 2001, when the company was purchased by Pinnacle to function as a business unit of the then-No. 4 tower company in the United States, where all three were serving as officers at the time.
BTI was founded in 1994 in Texas to specialize in offering site-management services to commercial building owners. Its services included managing rooftop antenna sites and providing broadband or fiber services for building tenants.
But BTI wasn’t a part of Pinnacle for long. It was sold in February 2003 to Gaboury, who had resigned as Pinnacle’s president in 2002. Lipham followed suit, leaving his vice-president role at Pinnacle and joining Gaboury at BTI soon after.
In the meantime, Pinnacle entered Chapter 11-bankruptcy protection and emerged from it in 2002 as a private company. This year it re-entered the public playing field with Global Signal Inc. as its moniker.
Kerwick came on board at BTI most recently. After leaving his vice-president post at Pinnacle in late 2003, he spent time consulting and teaching, until he decided, “You’re better off sticking with what you know.” His joining BTI marked his return to the tower industry.
Kerwick is leading the company’s newly announced expansion into the Northeast.
BTI’s core business now consists of providing site-management services to both tower owners and building owners, and the company’s executives see potential in eventually purchasing and building their own towers as well. The company takes a three-prong approach in managing, marketing and developing new and existing tower sites.
BTI is primarily concentrated in Dallas; Houston; New Orleans; Atlanta; and Charlotte, and is now gearing up to expand into the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions.
“This is a relationship business,” said Kerwick, noting that in addition to building relationships with service providers and building owners, BTI has strived for the same with contractors with which it can work in partnership, in part through incentives like a preferred vendor program.
And in that regard, these executives have learned from the past sins of the heavy-hitter tower owners. BTI said that owning all the parts of the tower-industry machine proved to be an unsuccessful business model, as evidenced by the public tower companies that have pared back down to their core tower ownership plans during the past few years.
American Tower Corp. just last week announced the sale of its construction business, demonstrating that the trend continues, even as the sector regains strength. RCR
