Crown Castle Focusing on Tower Pure Play Organic Growth
Since announcing in March 2025, the sale of its fiber and small cells business to focus exclusively on towers, Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI) has worked to keep the divestiture on track. The company hired tower industry veteran Chris Hillabrant as CEO in September 2025, Inside Towers reported. Crown Castle said Hillabrant’s mandate is to lead its transition to a focused, pure-play U.S. tower company while improving operational, financial, and strategic performance.
Hillabrant has focused on completing the divestiture of the company’s fiber and small cell assets through separate deals with Zayo and EQT, respectively, since joining Crown Castle. He has also had to navigate litigation with DISH Wireless, which Crown Castle says walked away from commitments to lease space on about 20,000 towers for its 5G buildout, agreements the company valued at roughly $3.5 billion, Inside Towers reported.
After closing the sale of its fiber and small cells business on May 1, Hillabrant turned his attention to growing Crown Castle’s tower business organically. “We’re now in a position to compete and focus on being the best tower company,” he said this week at Nareit’s REITweek conference. At the end of Q1 2026, Crown Castle reported it owned or leased 39,771 towers, all in the U.S.
Drawing on his long telecom experience, Hillabrant said Crown Castle sees growth opportunities in tenant services such as preconstruction, which he called a “very profitable” segment. “What I’m hearing from customers is they’re looking for more of a turnkey approach,” he said, adding that competitors already provide it. He also said the company is running several edge-compute trials and evaluating its ability to scale and capture some AI-driven growth.
Now operating as a pure-play tower company, Crown Castle has made staffing changes tied in part to the sale of its non-tower assets and the DISH litigation. The company announced layoffs in early February 2026, and said it would have about 1,250 full-time employees after the cuts. Hillabrant said Crown Castle has removed several layers of management to respond to customers more quickly.
To support growth after the transition, Crown Castle has added new leadership. In May, the company named Mark Lennon as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. With extensive tech experience, Lennon oversees the company’s information technology organization, including digital strategy, AI enablement, cybersecurity, infrastructure and operations, and enterprise applications.
As Crown Castle shifts its focus to organic growth, the company said it wanted a leader who is fluent in AI. “We have a great opportunity with the kind of platforms we’re implementing,” Hillabrant said.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
