Ask HN: Where would I find out about leasing land to telcos for 5G?
I'm the president of an HOA, and we have a nicely-situated street-light--on a hill, away from neighbors' objections, power, and a dedicated fiber pedestal about to be installed for such purposes. The area is currently under-served by some carriers, so I think it's possible that there would be some interest. Where do I go to get the conversation started?
13 comments
That's not how this works. As a carrier, I would always try to exhaust use of municipal or other public rights of way before dealing with a building or property owner.
Given that mmWave radios need clear line-of-sight to work properly, many 5G radios are going to end up being installed on poles. Somehow I doubt a building owner is going to match the $48 per year cost for me to rent a pole from an LDC, or $12.96 per pole per year from the incumbent.
Given that mmWave radios need clear line-of-sight to work properly, many 5G radios are going to end up being installed on poles. Somehow I doubt a building owner is going to match the $48 per year cost for me to rent a pole from an LDC, or $12.96 per pole per year from the incumbent.
Looking forward to the Tell HN: How I scaled my neighborhood light-pole to $48 ARR
Sometimes that’s a thing where the pole is on your property and the telco has no record of their right or access other than… time?
I think their usual approach is to remove it rather than pay because if they start paying, too many people will push them to do it.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/the-fixer/2021/03/21/got-an...
But there are cases of people forcing the telco into multi-thousand dollar payouts for a consent or an easement.
I think their usual approach is to remove it rather than pay because if they start paying, too many people will push them to do it.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/the-fixer/2021/03/21/got-an...
But there are cases of people forcing the telco into multi-thousand dollar payouts for a consent or an easement.
Municipalities or other levels of government usually have some amount of distance they can encroach onto properties in conjunction with the right of way for the road. It's quite rare for a utility to put facilities serving anyone other than the property owner on private property.
Google gives me this page for Verizon as the first result for "how to lease land for cell tower":
https://www.verizonwireless.com/business/real-estate-inquiri...
I expect you'll find more info further down the page.
https://www.verizonwireless.com/business/real-estate-inquiri...
I expect you'll find more info further down the page.
American Tower might have info for you. "If we don’t yet work together, but you have land, towers, or a rooftop you want to sell or lease to us, we want to talk to you about a competitive package." https://www.americantower.com/us/property-owners/
If you do find out, please please post a follow-up with details on how more of us can do this too? I live in an unincorporated area of Marin county, just north of San Francisco, maybe ten minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge — and we’ve got no cell phone signal here. It’s ridiculously annoying, but also a public safety risk.
You might try Sitemark. I know nothing about them beyond their stated purpose: "Sitemark is the platform where Network Operators and Property Owners come together to connect the world."
https://sitemark.org
https://sitemark.org
If it’s anything like the Verizon proposals I’ve seen, they’ll want to dictation antenna location.
Is that a bad thing? I'm asking genuinely. The ones I see are fake trees or they put in the top of a building
A few things to consider here, so you can see this from a carrier perspective.
1. What are they actually leasing? Are you leasing them land, or a pole, or the right to install equipment on a pole?
If it's either of the latter of the two, what is the wind and weight loading capacity of the pole? Who certified that? When was it last inspected? Who owns it and what are the maintenance obligations on it, so the part closest to the ground isn't corroded through by passing dogs using it as a toilet.
This matters to a Telco installing equipment, as they don't want it to fall on someone (or for their equipment to be too heavy and damage your lighting pole, and you to have a claim against them). You also don't want to have them claiming against you for the replacement of a macro cell mmW base station with an active antenna system if the lamp post falls over, as their kit is expensive.
2. What power is available? Is it independently metered, or an unmetered street lighting circuit? In some countries, you want a metered supply unless their radio equipment and similar is pre-rated by the energy company. Given cell sites use variable amounts of power, they likely don't want a fixed charge based on rated capacity. If your carrier installs backup power, is there space?
3. What network is the fibre connected to? For most mobile operators, they don't want a standard domestic GPON broadband connection - they'll usually want fibre connectivity to one of their transit network providers. What's the redundancy and fibre route like? The provider probably doesn't want to add another fibre provider to their supplier setup, unless they'll be adding lots of cell sites on their network. Usually operators don't like sitting adjacent to end users on a fibre network either - they prefer to sit in their own isolated network. Can that be delivered? Who's responsible for this?
4. Is there enough space for a communications cabinet at the base of the mast? These can be quite large and put out quite large quantities of heat. Is it opposite a road intersection that means it is more likely to be hit if someone blows through the intersection?
5. How long a lease are you offering? What's their certainty of tenure? They won't want to go to all this effort if they aren't getting long term confidence. Dealing with a single site owner can be annoying, as it doesn't scale.
6. Are there enough users to create a business case for this site? A European carrier needed an approx 1.5m EUR business case for return on investment over 3 years before it would even consider building a cell site, outside of their planned build - adding something new into the cell grid doesn't always make sense.
Site/tower companies provide aggregation to carriers and their supply chain partners (a lot of this varies in different markets), but on the whole, while in theory a lot of this is easy, it's actually far harder to provide an offering that "fits" the operator supply chain expectations. With mmWave, more sites are needed, so some of this will need to become more flexible, but on the whole, carriers are quite traditional in their ways.
1. What are they actually leasing? Are you leasing them land, or a pole, or the right to install equipment on a pole?
If it's either of the latter of the two, what is the wind and weight loading capacity of the pole? Who certified that? When was it last inspected? Who owns it and what are the maintenance obligations on it, so the part closest to the ground isn't corroded through by passing dogs using it as a toilet.
This matters to a Telco installing equipment, as they don't want it to fall on someone (or for their equipment to be too heavy and damage your lighting pole, and you to have a claim against them). You also don't want to have them claiming against you for the replacement of a macro cell mmW base station with an active antenna system if the lamp post falls over, as their kit is expensive.
2. What power is available? Is it independently metered, or an unmetered street lighting circuit? In some countries, you want a metered supply unless their radio equipment and similar is pre-rated by the energy company. Given cell sites use variable amounts of power, they likely don't want a fixed charge based on rated capacity. If your carrier installs backup power, is there space?
3. What network is the fibre connected to? For most mobile operators, they don't want a standard domestic GPON broadband connection - they'll usually want fibre connectivity to one of their transit network providers. What's the redundancy and fibre route like? The provider probably doesn't want to add another fibre provider to their supplier setup, unless they'll be adding lots of cell sites on their network. Usually operators don't like sitting adjacent to end users on a fibre network either - they prefer to sit in their own isolated network. Can that be delivered? Who's responsible for this?
4. Is there enough space for a communications cabinet at the base of the mast? These can be quite large and put out quite large quantities of heat. Is it opposite a road intersection that means it is more likely to be hit if someone blows through the intersection?
5. How long a lease are you offering? What's their certainty of tenure? They won't want to go to all this effort if they aren't getting long term confidence. Dealing with a single site owner can be annoying, as it doesn't scale.
6. Are there enough users to create a business case for this site? A European carrier needed an approx 1.5m EUR business case for return on investment over 3 years before it would even consider building a cell site, outside of their planned build - adding something new into the cell grid doesn't always make sense.
Site/tower companies provide aggregation to carriers and their supply chain partners (a lot of this varies in different markets), but on the whole, while in theory a lot of this is easy, it's actually far harder to provide an offering that "fits" the operator supply chain expectations. With mmWave, more sites are needed, so some of this will need to become more flexible, but on the whole, carriers are quite traditional in their ways.
ask them
"Hello Verizon Mobile customer service? No, nothing is wrong with my phone, I want to lease my land to you for cell towers. What's that? You have no idea and neither will the next two people you transfer me to and eventually I'll give up. Awesome-sauce"