Cell tower lease optimization is not rocket science. The bottom line is that regardless of what the wireless consultant on the other end of the phone tells you, there is a growing need for your site. Wireless carriers just don’t want to pay all that money so they can make bigger profits. They pay high commissions to third-party outsourcing companies, also known as “wireless lease consultants,” by successfully renegotiating existing cell tower leases. the more money they take off the rent, the higher their commissions will be.
Here’s some food for thought…
If wireless carriers need to build over 100,000 new cell sites in the US in the next few years, and their site needs to be optimized, why don’t they just call in an RF engineer to adjust the antennas? They are building more sites to meet the demand. Industry insiders say cell phones will be the only phones we’ll have in the future and traditional landlines will become obsolete. Many more people will use a greater number of mobile phones, which will create a greater demand for capacity. This equates to increased revenue for wireless carriers.
Stop and think. If a wireless carrier pays you $1,000 per month for antenna space, how many people must be subscribers in the radius of that tower to help them break even on their rental payment? The average Blackberry user pays about $100 per month for unlimited text, data, and email and has a voice plan to meet their requirements. How many people have more than one phone on their plan?
According to the US Census Bureau, in 2003 there were 159 million mobile phone users in the United States. In 2005, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) reported more than 204 million wireless phone subscribers in the US or about 70% of the population.
So go check your cell site or cell tower. Over 70% of people who live closer to your site than the next cell site have their cell phone calls routed through your location and each of the carriers that rent space there. Count how many people live within a 1/2 or 1 mile radius of your cell site. Multiply that number by 70%. Estimate that most of these people pay between $40 and $100 per month for their cell phone service. Take a look at your rent check. Then tell the cell site lease optimization company to go bark salt and bark up someone else’s tree.
Wireless lease optimization is all smoke and mirrors. regardless of what the so-called experts say. Carriers need your site. Period. There is an increase in demand and they need your site to download capacity and improve the network. I use the analogy of going from a two-lane country highway to a 12-lane superhighway. This is literally how the cellular industry is morphing in front of us, however, there are companies that want you to believe that their site is in low demand.
Don’t be fooled by cell site lease optimization. It can cost you millions of dollars in lost rental income over the life of your cell tower lease.