Published reports indicate that T-Mobile USA’s plans to sell off its tower assets is moving forward, with Crown Castle International currently seen as the lead bidder.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Crown Castle has placed a bid for more than $2 billion to gain access to T-Mobile USA’s more than 7,000 tower sites. Analysts have been expecting those assets to garner up to $3 billion, with other tower companies still reportedly in the mix.
“We also believe that the auction is far from over, however, and that [American Tower] may yet come in with a knockout bid,” noted Macquarie Equities Research in a report.
Macquarie Equities previously reported that American Tower was an early front runner in the bidding, with expected strong bids from Crown Castle and SBA Communications.
T-Mobile USA is looking to sell off its tower assets in an attempt to raise funds needed to support its build out of LTE services across its network. The company noted that those plans are likely to run $4 billion. Parent company Deutsche Telekom managed to snare $3 billion from AT&T following a failed acquisition attempt of T-Mobile USA, but has said it did not plan to provide those funds to T-Mobile USA in order to support its operations.
Crown Castle last week announced it had signed an agreement with T-Mobile USA extending current leases on 7,300 Crown Castle sites for 10 years and granting T-Mobile rights to upgrade certain towers to go along with the carrier’s network upgrade plan. Crown Castle noted the agreement will result in an increase in site revenue beginning during the current third quarter. T-Mobile USA currently runs its network across some 37,000 cell sites.
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