While Sprint has announced that it’s overhauling its network to a shift to smaller cells and cutting $1 billion in costs, tower companies and macrocells still are in high demand.
FierceWireless reports news reports said that shares of big companies like American Tower and Crown Castle, who work with Sprint, had slid, but Sprint said that the “report was inaccurate.” Tower companies, who recently shared fourth-quarter results, said that they continue to make leasing deals with tower companies for macrocells, FierceWireless reports.
CEO of SBA Communications, Jeffrey Stoops, said during a fourth-quarter earnings call last week that there is a lot of hard negotiation throughout history, and needs are of course changing. Usually the two parties meet “somewhere in the middle.”
Three of the four big carriers have reported their fourth-quarter earnings, and the consensus for now seems to be that small cells and macrocells will work side-by-side, not as one or the other.
CEO of Crown Castle, Ben Moreland, also was on the earnings call, and said that “macro sites remain the most attractive and cost effective way to cover a given geography with the spectrum that they [carriers] own.” FierceWireless reports that Moreland said that Crown Castle is participating in hybrid sites and hetnet architectures, also working with the four carriers to utilize cost of capital and the sharing model. He said it was “helpful” that three out of the four carriers have said “macro tower sites are an integral part of their model going forward.”
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