The Wireless Wise Guys Podcast. Everything you wanted to know about cell tower leases, but were afraid to ask. Powered by Tower Genius, the USA’s premier cell tower lease experts.
Steve Kazella:
Hey YouTube. This is Steve Kazella partner with Tower Genius, and I’m here down in the Fort Walton beach, Florida area. So I wanted to answer a question that we frequently get from cell tower landlords. You’re trying to figure out, “Well, who are the tenants up there? Who are those carriers that are leasing space up on the tower? Who are those companies that are hanging their antennas there? And so, one of the ways that you can figure that out is you can pull records in the county. So you can find out who pulled electrical permits, was it AT&T new Cingular? Was it Cellco limited partnership, Verizon Wireless? Was it Omnipoint, T-Mobile so you can look for those types of things. You might have to fill out a FOIA request, but you can go in and search records, electrical permits, things like that. Architectural drawings.
Another thing that you can do as a cell tower landlord, if you’re wondering, well, did the tower company illegally sublet to somebody and not tell me, well, they’re not going to do that. They’re not going to jeopardize, first of all, the reputation, they’re not going to break the law. But you can also reach out to their landlord relations departments, give them a call and then ask them to provide a name, a list of the tenants there. You can send them a letter to the legal notifications address that’s in your cell tower contract. Another thing you could do is take a walk. So another thing that you could do is take a look at the electrical meters.
And I have no idea what I’m filming here. I can’t see it, but if you look at this is… I think it’s a ground castle site. Anyway, it’s a monopole and you see here, there’s a generator behind the fence. Sometimes you’ll have equipment that’s labeled here. And I don’t know if you can see that, but one of the boxes here says Nextel, right? That’s a sprint site might be decommissioned at some point. I don’t know. Another thing that you can do is look in the back here all the way in the back in the corner, down there, if you could see that there is an electrical meter bank. Now you can’t see if it’s labeled, but there are labels on there. So you can look to see if there are labels on the equipment. And also if those electrical meters are spinning, then you can pretty be sure that they’re operational.
So if you can’t see that far, bring a camera lens with you. I don’t recommend bringing a rifle scope, because they might think you’re a nut job, but if you have questions about your cell tower agreement, give us a call at Tower Genius. Book a 30 minute discovery call at (888) 313-9750. And one other thing I forgot, if you’re at the site and you have to see tower technicians climbing the tower, working on the site, bring them a cup of coffee, a couple donuts, six pack of beer goes very far and ask them, “Hey guys, who are those tenants? Can you tell me who the tenants are? Which companies are having their antennas attached to that tower? You’d be surprised at the information that you can obtain from the cell tower technicians. They usually very helpful. All right. Have a good one. Speaker 1:
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