John Paleski’s love affair with the tower business began as a teenager building rooftop CB radio towers for himself and his friends. Since, he’s worked in multiple aspects of the business including legal, site acquisition, tower construction and repairs. In 1986, he founded Subcarrier Communications, now one of the country’s largest independent builders, owners and operators of high-capacity colocation towers. But that hasn’t kept Paleski away from hard hats and harnesses. He’s been climbing towers since 1980, while also advocating for safe conditions for tower workers. In 2014, Paleski starred in “Hang Men,” a Discovery Channel reality show about climbers produced by Inside Towers Managing Editor Jim Fryer. And last year Paleski and climber William Stone scaled a 1,700-foot tower as part of a Labor Day-themed campaign for Red Wing Shoes.
You began climbing towers decades ago and still do today, even as a company president. Why is that important to you and what does it say about your commitment to safe conditions for climbers?
Back in the late 1980s, tower climbing was not a regulated industry. We had to use tree climbing hardware and a system of ropes. Safety cables weren’t mandated until about 1998, so any tower worker had to free climb. You’d wear proper boots and a proper belt and try to hook off whenever you get tired. But that was it in terms of safety. I was an early proponent of having uniform safety standards because too many folks were getting very badly injured, and there were several fatalities. I got together with my friends and said, “Look, we have to do something about this.” Around 1998, they started looking into it and OSHA and a lot of states got involved. But we built all the first generation cellular without any safety equipment whatsoever. I remember those days and they were pretty dark ones in the industry.
Flash forward to 2025 and, in an open letter to the wireless industry and an open petition to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, NATE’s Todd Schlekeway issued a serious indictment on how a myriad of issues could cripple contractors this year and beyond. Among them: lopsided carrier pricing models, red tape, slow pay, and compliance nightmares. What role can the tower companies play in helping resolve some of the issues NATE raises?
Todd has had his finger on the pulse of the industry from the very beginning. The issues he brings up are the same nagging problems we’ve had for the past decade. A lot of those problems start with the entire turfing vendor way that the cell carriers conduct business. Something needs to be done about that because the wireless carriers pay these turfing vendors lots of money. But the problem is that money does not trickle down through all those different layers, from a national company to a regional to a statewide to a local company. By the time the local tower worker is hired, there’s very little money left for the contractor to pay for safety gear and to pay their men properly. There’s enough money in the system. But when it comes down to our level, the money has pretty much been absorbed by all those companies who came before. The carriers should look into that. Maybe they should hire statewide contractors instead of national contractors. It’ll certainly add a lot more money to the bottom line of those hard-working tower folks who are performing those dangerous jobs. That should be step one.
What inning are we in during the telecom industry consolidation game?
Each decade I have pondered that question, and I’ve always thought we were right around middle innings. When we first entered this industry back in 1985-86, everybody laughed at us because they thought everything that’s possibly going to get built out had already been built. Yet in 1986, we weren’t even done with the first inning. I feel we’re still early in this game. There is an enormous amount of work to do: removing a lot of 4G and replacing that with 5G. Many towers need to come down, newer towers need to be built. I feel that over the long term, the tower industry is still going to be outpacing the general telecom industry, although there will be massive data centers built over the next five to 10 years. Many frequency bands must be integrated into the system. The data rates are just going to be astronomical, and the amount of features and apps are going to put lots of stress and demand on the system. It’s going to be an endless cycle. FCC Chair Brendan Carr is making a full court press to start auctioning off more frequency blocks. He’s got the right idea – we need more and faster bandwidth, and that will spur more apps and more and different types of programs. Your cell phone is going to become much more important in the future. When you look at all the frequency blocks left to be auctioned off, built and integrated into the wireless system, it’s enormous. We’re going to be more than doubling the amount of bandwidth that we have. So that says to me, we can’t be much past the fifth inning.
By Paul Heine, Inside Towers Contributing Analyst
Paul Heine has covered radio/audio, media and marketing since 1985. He has held senior editorial management positions at Inside Radio, Radio & Records, Billboard Radio Monitor and the Friday Morning Quarterback (FMQB). Heine has also reported and analyzed media news and trends for Adweek, Mediaweek, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter; appeared on “Today” and Fox News; and has been quoted in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and other publications. He began his career in on-air and programming positions at radio stations in Buffalo and Rochester, NY.
Reader Interactions