Renegotiating a Cell Tower or Cell Site Lease

On a weekly basis, SteelintheAir gets inquiries from landowners who are currently leasing ground space for a cell site or in a site management agreement with a cell tower company or wireless carrier. Many times these landowners feel that they either negotiated the cell site lease for too little rent or that the previous owner did. In some cases, they are right.

This issue is compounded by the fact that a number of cell site leases and agreements from towers built in the mid 1990s are about to expire. This is due to tremendous building of cell tower sites after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was enacted. Although the majority of current cell tower leases provide for multiple five or ten year terms that are renewed entirely at the discretion of the wireless carrier or tower company, many of those older cell tower leases do not have an automatic renewal clause in them and will expire in the near future.

IF YOUR CELL SITE LEASE HAS NO RENEWAL CLAUSE - Then you are in a good position in most cases to renegotiate the cell site lease. Depending upon the location and the number or tenants who are currently using the tower, you might be in a great position to ask for substantially more revenue from the tower company or wireless carrier or take the tower over yourself and receive additional revenue from other tenants. We at Steelintheair.com recommend that you first consult an attorney to determine what your responsibilities are under the current cell site lease. Then feel free to contact us for more information about how we can help you determine what is the best course of action for you to take in renegotiating your cell site lease. You can try to take this on yourself, however there exists some risk that the tower company or wireless carrier might decide to relocate their tower or cell site elsewhere and you might lose all the revenue. Or, you may fail to negotiate the best deal and leave money on the table month after month. See our lease chart to see how much of a difference even $100/month can mean over the course of a cell site lease.

IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM CROWN CASTLE ABOUT RENEWING YOUR LEASE, PLEASE VISIT OUR CROWN CASTLE LEASE EXPIRATION PAGE.

IF YOUR CELL SITE LEASE HAS A RENEWAL CLAUSE OR HAS NOT EXPIRED - In most cases you will not be able to renegotiate regardless of whether or not you believe the cell site lease rate is fair. Many contracts, especially those written in the last five years, are very well written from a legal standpoint and do not allow termination by the landlord. If, however, the cellular tower company is currently in default of the lease, than the landlord can use whatever legal remedies are available to him under the lease and the laws of that state. Common breaches of cell site leases are: failure to pay rent, use of ground outside of the lease area, use of equipment or structures that are not covered under the lease, and subletting or assignment that is not allowed under the cell site lease. Speak with an attorney regarding these breaches. If the attorney believes the contract has been breached, contact us to see if we may be able to help you renegotiate your agreement.

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Please note that Crown Castle is a trademark of Crown Castle International. Cingular, AT&T, Sprint and Nextel are registered trademarks of Cingular Wireless, AT&T, Sprint PCS, and Nextel Communications. Steel in the Air is not affiliated with any of these companies.