• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Towers -- now a bad investment

J

joshzz

Just read last week on AGL (ABOVE GROUND LEVEL MAGAZINE) that towers are plummeting in value as new technologies allow for new antennas to be placed on traffic light poles, etc..

A lot of the previous technologies, PAGERS are disappearing and new communication modalities don't have to be on tall towers.

A few days a tower company contacted me stating that their company had an interest in my tower. Apparently they own a number of towers and have plans to expand --- I told him about the AGL article & that his company may need to rethink their strategy.

At some point maybe 10 -20 years there probably will be no need for behemoth towers...all Radio & TV transmissions will have migrated to the - internet- cable -fios - satellite -- Do you agree?
 
I would argue that NIMBYs are still out there and will continue to block new small neighborhood towers as they have with cell towers.

A wise consulting engineer one told me; height is might. Apparently there is no substitute for a tall tower with enough space to have several tenants. As more 'wireless' technologies come up, there will always be demand for a tower to cover a large area, vs. going through all the permitting and expense to erect or attach-to lower height poles, billboards, or what have you.

Right now everything is devalued. My advice is to hang on to your tower and keep it in good shape for future tenants when the economic conditions start to thaw out. In fact, a good tower location may be worth more than the radio or TV station associated with the tower, especially an AM station.
 
Tower owners have been over-charging tenants for years. Above Ground Level Magazine reports that basically the "extortion game" is over. Height WAS might I would agree but it's all changing and being a tenant myself, I'm glad there's a big shift.

LET ME SHARE WITH YOU SOME QUOTES FROM AGL from THE DYNAMICS AFFECTING CURRENT TOWER VALUES by Thomas Engel (I would personally recommend you visit their site and subscribe to their magazine & then read the full article):

"Many Tower owners are in a state of denial. Although some factors driving the sharp downward are cyclical, other factors will continue to drive down certain tower values. Those tower values affected by changing technology will not come back up to previous levels." "Technology has diminished the value of large, heavy-duty tower and mountainside sites. The value of these sites is rapidly trending downward and will not come back." "The tsunami of technological change will obliterate the value of certain sites over the next few years."

.... All this is music to my ears being a tenant on multiple towers and still expanding.... :)
 
I'm confused about your situation. Why is a tower company asking you about a tower you don't own? And why are you telling them they're in the wrong business?
 
Maybe it's just me, but if someone came to me and offered to buy my house, I wouldn't show them articles that said now is a bad time to buy real estate.
 
Wow! What a great future!

Josh, you should buy a station with a great tower from your friend, the broker with all those Southern daytimer AM's, as you tell all the rest of us. Demonstrate us how it's done!

I'll watch from here.
 
WTF, Josh. Are you running a business or just like to throw money away? If someone comes knocking at your door with money, talk to them. Even better take the money! Why on earth would you discourage someone from giving you money?
 
The key to understanding the future value of towers is to gain an understanding of who will be the dominant user of tower space in the future.

Tall towers and mountain top sites have been in demand for ONE WAY signals. Broadcasting, paging, Muzak, and some LOW VOLUME two way signals. Ambulance service and dispatching deputy sheriffs in low density areas can use tall sites.

The cell phone companies early on wanted tall sites to get maximum coverage. In recent years they have matured and added more and more locations with short, short towers so they can re-use the same frequency over and over and over in high density areas. They specify antennas with steep downward tilt so that one tower does not shine "right into the eyes" of the next tower over.

It looks like the growth includes Kindle and iPad type devices, internet delivery, etc. We really haven't figured out yet what Google and other new players have in mind for the spectrum recently given up by the TV broadcast industry, and the additional spectrum they seem to want to wrestle away from TV. I assume all the new golly-gee-whiz applications will be two-way and they will want the ability to reuse the frequency over and over like the cell phone people.

There will always be the need for a few tall towers for services that cater to low density users (We back to ambulance service.) I think the future growth is in a lot of 75, 100 and 125 foot towers in a back yard year everybody.
 
GCR,

I think you are correct. All of the proposed new spectrum uses are all for high volume two-way data, including mobile IP based video.

When the analog TV bandwidth is repurposed, I think we will see any number of services based on two-way data. 4G and 5G services I believe will be more spectrum efficient than 3G and 2G, but even then, physics dictates that you can only cram so much into a given slice of spectrum.

All goes back to my comment: if someone sees a value in your vertical real estate and want to talk to you about leasing it, why discourage them?
 
Tower height is still king for large coverage areas and always will be, nothing really takes it's place. The small tower chain system is good for multi coverage areas with multi transmitters but more often than not has areas of little or no coverage holes that if you live, work, or travel in that area makes it a real pain. There is a better way with digital communications that isn't quit ready yet but would make a big big difference in comunications if and when it is completed.
 
HI GRC,

Great post!

According to the report, a lot of new services are migrating their placements to preexisting utility poles as opposed to building anything new.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom