Ameren Services Company, an operating unit of utility holding company Ameren Corporation (NYSE: AEE), has partnered with Diamond Communications, a private wireless infrastructure company, to exclusively market and manage the installation of mobile network operator equipment on select Ameren assets.
The Ameren-Diamond partnership will facilitate Ameren’s ongoing efforts to make available to MNOs its extensive existing infrastructure for deployment of enhanced wireless services that benefit consumers, businesses, and communities throughout Illinois and Missouri. Ameren’s infrastructure assets comprise power transmission towers, communications towers and land that collectively provide the necessary structures to help accelerate MNO build-outs.
Diamond’s role is to market these new colocatable communications and power transmission towers along with existing cell towers and other assets to MNOs and manage wireless infrastructure deployments at these locations. Depending on the MNO and the specific site, Diamond facilitates and coordinates power to these sites while the MNOs generally are responsible for their own backhaul.
“Diamond is excited to partner with Ameren and take advantage of their many colocatable assets in the Midwest, a region where we have established deep relationships with the major wireless carriers,” said Ed Farscht, Diamond’s CEO. “We look forward to bringing our knowledge and best practices in the utility space to benefit the communities Ameren serves as we work with the team at Ameren to expand use of their assets for wireless development.”
In December, 2020, Ameren signed a 30-year agreement to lease 900 MHz spectrum licenses from Anterix (NASDAQ: ATEX) for Ameren’s private broadband LTE network that provides critical communications services to manage its utility network. To that end, Ameren is building 200 new communications towers for its network and is installing its own RAN equipment.
At the end of 2Q23, St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation served 2.4 million electric customers and more than 900,000 natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area through its Ameren Missouri and Ameren Illinois rate-regulated utility subsidiaries.
Diamond Communications, headquartered in Springfield, NJ, owns/manages over 4,000 tenanted wireless communication sites in the U.S. along with other communications infrastructure including fiber and distributed antenna systems.
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