Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Towers of power Cellphone tower giant Crown Castle International announced it would buy rival Global Signal in a $4 billion deal. The move will make Crown Castle, with over 24,000 towers, the #1 US cell tower company, reportedly slightly ahead of going ahead of American Tower (around 22,000 towers). These companies lease their towers to the (now) big four cell phone companies (Cingular, Verizon Wireless, Sprint/Nextel, and T-Mobile). As the oligopsony of buyers of their services shrinks, so does, in almost predictable form, the oligopoly of tower providers, which is down to four major ones, Oligopolies beget oligopsonies and vice versa. The move follows the acquisition of AAT Communications by SBA Communications early this year, another tower consolidation move. American Tower in 2005 merged with rival SpectraSite. In July, Crown Castle bought Mountain Union Telecom, a Virginia company with nearly 500 cell phone towers, $309 million. 7:44:12 PM

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