Tower Company CEOs See Long Future for 5G

Tower company CEOs expect a strong 2023, with 5G driving carrier investments, and the major carriers all building out mid-band spectrum. Meanwhile, a CTIA official said Thursday the key to the U.S. leading on 6G is getting 5G policy right.

The major carriers will likely spend less on their networks this year than in 2022, but SBA expects them to stay "relatively busy” as they build out mid-band for 5G, said CEO Jeff Stoops.

Some of AT&T's and Verizon’s C-band licenses won’t “be cleared until later this year” and other licenses have been delayed because of the lapse of FCC spectrum authority, Stoops said. The FCC recently approved dual-band radios supporting 3.45 GHz and C band that providers are planning to use, and radios supporting C band and the citizens broadband radio service band are pending, he said. Dish Wireless “will be moving forward with additional collocations to meet their 2025 coverage requirements,” Stoops said: “We believe all of these developments will drive multi-year continued development activity.”

Stoops was also encouraged by CTIA’s recent letter to President Joe Biden on the wireless industry's urgent need for more full-power licensed spectrum (see 2304280027). The letter “demonstrates the industry believes that more network resources will be necessary to handle increasing demand for volume, quality and new applications and to stay competitive with the rest of the world,” he said.

Driven by 5G, American Tower expects organic growth of at least 5% or 6% per year over the next five years, though loss of Sprint towers could offer headwinds, CEO Tom Bartlett told investors on an earnings call. Because of data growth, carriers will likely need twice the network capacity in three to four years they have today and will need three times the capacity by the end of the decade, he said. “Every year, U.S. wireless subscribers consume more mobile data through a growing number of devices and applications, requiring faster speeds and lower latency,” he said.

“While we’re still in the relatively early stages of the overall 5G rollout, we continue to see customers making significant investments into their networks. Looking out over the next several years, we see an environment that is supportive of continued strong performance in the U.S. as the 5G investment cycle progresses and densification occurs,” Bartlett said.

5G is “still in the early innings,” but overall spending is likely to exceed spending on 4G, said Crown Castle CEO Jay Brown. Deploying 5G will probably take “a full decade,” he said. “The need for substantial investment in networks has persisted from 2G through 5G,” he said. Brown predicted growing demand for small cells since macro towers “just can't serve that need for densification of the network.” That has been true since the end of the 4G era, he said.

Dish appears to be committed to becoming a fourth major U.S. carrier, Brown said. “We have seen them behave in a very consistent way with desiring to build a nationwide network,” he said: “Dish has made a very significant commitment to us in terms of the number of sites necessary for their network and a financial commitment around that” and “we’re committed to doing everything we can to help them get those sites on air.”

The White House’s recent 6G summit (see 2304210069) “provided a glimpse into how existing and future technologies might support new use cases and substantial advances in wireless capabilities,” blogged CTIA Chief Communications Officer Nick Ludlum. “All of the hard work on 6G will go for naught unless we get 5G policy right,” he said. That starts with restoring FCC authority to auction spectrum, he said.

“The importance of global leadership in 5G was largely overlooked” at the summit, Ludlum said. America’s leadership must be restored on the international stage, he said: “For decades, the U.S. has had a proven track record of pursuing global harmonization when it comes to identifying spectrum bands for mobile use. Effective leadership means bringing other nations along as we set a course that allows U.S. and other trusted providers to expand their footprints efficiently across the globe.” Today, China, not the U.S., is making “aggressive moves in the wireless ecosystem, including in preparation for this fall’s World Radiocommunication Conference, with bold plans to identify new allocations of midband spectrum” while the U.S. “remains largely on the sidelines,” he said.