AT&T, Verizon and Tillman Infrastructure announced this week an agreement to build hundreds of cell towers, with the possibility of expanding the agreement in the future. Tillman will construct the towers to-suit for AT&T and Verizon, who will co-anchor the towers.
Construction on the initial towers is slated for the first quarter of 2018 and they will be built in areas where towers currently do not exist. AT&T and Verizon plan to use this as an opportunity to relocate equipment from current towers.
The decision to go with New York-based Tillman – which describes itself as “a disruptive U.S. telecom tower builder and operator” – offers a departure from the normal top cell tower companies, such as American Tower, Crown Castle or SBA Communications.
Both AT&T and Verizon highlighted the need to reduce costs in the announcement.
“It is imperative to reduce operating costs. We review all our long-term contracts as they come up for renewal and we are excited to develop new vendor partners to diversify our infrastructure providers,” said Nicola Palmer, the chief network officer for Verizon.
“We need more alternatives to the traditional tower leasing model with the large incumbents. It’s not cost-effective or sustainable,” added Susan Johnson, senior vice president of Global Supply at AT&T.
Suruchi Ahuja, CFO of Tillman Infrastructure, affirmed, “Over the past year we have built a strong team at Tillman and are committed to rapidly building a leader in wireless infrastructure in the U.S. in order to best serve carriers and the broader communities in which we will enable connectivity.”
