Tower Talks with Inside Towers

Digital twins have become a powerful tool for TowerCos - helping to uncover hidden revenue, reduce costs, and improve decision-making. But misconceptions about site data and operations are still costing TowerCos millions, according to vHive. In this episode, vHive's CRO Itai Karelic joins Inside Towers' John Celentano to break down five costly myths to reveal how digital twins can unlock untapped value.From unbilled equipment to costly rework, learn how TowerCos are turning hidden risks into revenue opportunities.Support the show

Although designed to last a long time, towers undergo continual loading changes as mobile network operators and wireless service providers add, upgrade or replace their transmission equipment. And towers must withstand constant changes in the weather.Mike Seymour, President and Bryan Lanier, Vice President-Operations at Congruex Wireless Solutions talk with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor about structural engineering considerations for towers, along with new processes and solutions to keep the towers standing and operating cost-effectively.Support the show

Human trafficking involves the exploitation of men, women and children, for some sort of control or monetary gain.The Telecommunications Against Trafficking and Exploitation, or T.A.T.E., initiative offers guidelines for the many men and women who work in telecom to help prevent such exploitations by knowing what to look for and how to respond.Ashlie Bryant, co-founder and CEO, and Josh Loaiza, business development manager of 3 Strands Global Foundation, and Jim Tracy, CEO of Legacy Enterprises, discuss the T.A.T.E. program with John Celentano, Inside Towers, Business Editor.Join the Fight Against Human Trafficking with T.A.T.E. Be part of the solution. Explore the Telecom Against Trafficking and Exploitation (T.A.T.E.) program at www.3sgf.org/tate. Want to bring T.A.T.E. to your company or learn how you can get involved? Contact Josh Loaiza, T.A.T.E. Program Manager at 3Strands Global Foundation at joshl@3sgf.org and download a one-pager with more information here. You can also always call the Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888 or Textline: 233733 (BEFREE).Support the show

Tower companies report an increase in colocation requests from MNOs and other wireless operators, more than for lease amendments on existing sites. Onboarding second or third tenants involves different considerations than hosting the anchor tenant. Harmoni Towers' CCO Chas Peterson and SVP of Business Development Aaron Bloom discuss these key colocation considerations with Inside Towers Business Editor John Celentano.Support the show

Co-hosts Patrick Halley, WIA CEO and President, and Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor recently chatted with Jim Stritzinger, the Director of the South Carolina Broadband Office on the Wireless Water Cooler podcast.In this lively and candid half-hour talk, the focus is on innovative ways the public and private sectors can partner to ensure the federal funding from NTIA's Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program is optimized for states and their residents to bridge the digital divide.In September, the federal government approved South Carolina's plan to roll out $551 million in BEAD funding in the state. Several states across the country, including South Carolina, expect to have remaining federal dollars after initially deploying broadband to unserved or underserved communities. What's the best use of BEAD non-deployment broadband funding to help states meet their connectivity goals for underserved communities: Mobility? Workforce? Healthcare? Education? Digital Equity? Listen in and find out.Support the show

Tower climbers work in all kinds of weather that affect their health and safety, especially in hot and humid conditions. Industry and government agencies are making a concerted effort to establish appropriate Heat Injury and Illness Prevention safety standards and practices in construction industries but some of these may be difficult to adhere to as written for our tower climbers.Bryant Bertrand, CEO of Ronin Revolution, and Kathy Stieler, Director of Safety, Health & Compliance at NATE -The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association speak with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor about a proposed OSHA standard for heat injury and illness protection, and how it applies to tower climbers.Support the show

We often hear about municipalities or individuals pushing back on new cell tower developments in their communities over location or aesthetics. A recent case involved two competing tower companies that went to court over a siting dispute with an interesting outcome.Rod Carter, Partner, Jake Remington, Senior Counsel, and Joe Diedrich, Senior Associate, all with Husch Blackwell's Telecom Law Practice, offer a briefing on the case and what transpired in conversation with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor.Support the show

In the U.S., large public tower companies hold a substantial portion of the communications towers in operation. The remainder are owned and managed by numerous smaller private companies that support a range of mobile network operators and other wireless service providers. Private tower companies often can be more agile and offer custom services to their customers. But there are challenges.Yannis Macheras, CEO of Harmoni Towers discusses with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor, some of the opportunities and challenges for private tower companies.Support the Show.

The digital infrastructure business continues to be dynamic and challenging. Bernard Borghei, tower company veteran and CEO of Symphony Wireless, shares his perspectives and outlook on the wireless market and overall digital infrastructure ecosystem with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of August 5, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

Fiber optic systems are used everywhere to provide high speed connections to buildings, towers, and data centers. Increasing demand for high-speed data, streaming video and burgeoning AI-enabled services is driving construction and expansion of fiber routes to provide more connectivity. At the same time, the market has become a mix of large and small fiber operators, all competing for a piece of the business.Tyler Coates, Chief Revenue Officer at FiberLight discusses with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor the fiber market's opportunities and challenges.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of July 22, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

Steel structural elements are designed to support the weight and wind loading that macrocell antennas and radio units create on a tower. More important, structural elements must be designed and installed to minimize passive intermodulation interference, or PIM, that is generated from transmitted and received RF signals reflecting off of these elements.CommScope's Chuck Mann, Senior Director, Engineering R&D and Jared Haines, Director of Product Line Management-Structures, talk to John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor about structural design considerations, available products and innovations.Support the Show.

iconectiv TruOps Common Language® is a distributed data registry that increases corporate revenues by streamlining network planning, service activation and technology rollouts via industry standard location and equipment identification codes. Using Common Language codes streamlines communication and management across the data network and telecom interconnection ecosystem and enables critical information exchange via operations support systems and other interface mechanisms. The platform is particularly applicable to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.Juan Carlos “JC” Ortiz, Principal-Corporate Business Development, and Mykola “Myk” Konrad, Senior Vice President-Head of Product at iconectiv, join John Celentano, Inside Towers, Business Editor to discuss Common Language codes and their benefits for the telecom industry.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of July 15, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

Planning and building digital infrastructure is hard and requires technical and project management capabilities and skills that few organizations can offer at scale.Fullerton is an established engineering and construction management firm that handles projects for tower companies and communications service providers to deploy wireless or fiber networks, outdoors and inside buildings. The company takes a project from the architectural and engineering phase through coordinating and managing the flow of materials and labor needed to complete the job to customer specifications.Kelly Lazuka, CEO at Fullerton shares her perspectives and outlook on the telecom infrastructure services business in conversation with John Celentano, Inside Towers, Business Editor. Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of June 10, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

Satellite-based services for decades have provided a variety of applications across commercial, industrial and government markets. Different satellite systems – GEO, MEO, LEO - serve different purposes.Recent discussions on direct satellite to cell phone connections or broadband internet connectivity address just a part of the broader satellite-based communications business.Greg Quiggle, Senior Vice President at Kratos Defense and Security Solutions shares with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor, his insights and outlook on the satellite communications business and non-terrestrial network opportunities.For information on Kratos' Open Space Platform, visit https://www.kratosdefense.com/systems-and-platforms/space-systems/dynamic-ground/platform.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of May 28, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of May 13, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

Telecom equipment distributors play a pivotal role in supplying all the infrastructure elements that make broadband and mobile networks work. Distributors stock their warehouses with thousands of products from hundreds of manufacturers and deliver orders for these products from network operators and their contractors to wherever the equipment is needed in the field.Melissa Seibring, Director of Marketing and Gus Vasilakis, VP-Global Business Development and VP-Canadian Operations at Power & Tel in conversation with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor discuss the important role that distributors play in the telecom supply chain and how that role is evolving. Support the Show.

There is more and more fiber being deployed in the middle mile and deeper into the network to interconnect data centers and enterprises, provide wireless carriers with cell site backhaul, and enable telco and ISP deployments.Clearfield, a fiber management and connectivity provider, designs and builds the products needed to power active equipment at the edge and manage and deploy the fiber cables all the way to the premises. Clearfield bills itself as ‘the fiber to anywhere company.'Kevin Morgan, Clearfield's Chief Marketing Officer, Roberto Vargas, Technology Platform Manager, Active Cabinets, and Michael Wood, Market Manager discuss with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor the company's role in the fiber business and its outlook on the fiber market.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of April 29, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the Show.

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of April 15-19, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

Co-hosts Patrick Halley, WIA CEO and President, and Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor recently chatted with U.S. Congressman Buddy Carter (GA-01) on the Wireless Water Cooler podcast. The five-term Congressman is Chair of the Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials Subcommittee and was formerly Vice Chair of the Communications & Technology subcommittee.In this lively and candid half hour talk, Rep. Carter discusses a variety of issues including how BEAD money will connect his constituents across the coastal region of Georgia. The conversation also covered how Congress works with NTIA and the FCC to ensure federal money results in timely and quality deployment. Rep. Carter discusses how Georgia has an excellent Broadband Ready Cities certification program that gives guidelines to cities and counties to streamline permitting for broadband, with 49 communities already certified. Support the show

The tower business is alive and well, despite the slower pace of network builds among the U.S. mobile network operators. While the public tower companies are guiding to low single-digit growth in 2024, there is movement among the smaller, private tower companies.Private tower deals tend to be small, from a few towers to a few hundred towers at a time. Still, tower acquisitions are taking place, both domestically and internationally. In the process, a few mid-size tower companies are growing their business through these acquisitions.Everest Infrastructure Partners is one such company.Matt Newton, CEO and Mike Mackey, President of Everest Infrastructure Partners along with Clayton Funk, Managing Director at Houlihan Lokey talk to John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor about the company's business model and its success to date, along with the outlook for the tower business.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of April 1, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of March 4, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of February 26, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of January 19, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

Jim Tracy has worked in the wireless infrastructure business for many years, from climbing towers to running his own tower contracting business, to serving as Board Chairman of NATE and now as President of the Tower Family Foundation (TFF).  In conversation with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor, Tracy shares insights gained from his long experience in the tower contracting business, his unwavering advocacy for better and safer tower climbing work practices, and the outstanding charitable work that TFF is doing to support families of tower climbers in times of need.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of January 29, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

Tower climbing is inherently hazardous and dangerous. More than that, tower technicians must be knowledgeable and skilled at constructing towers, and installing and testing RF, fiber, and related power systems. The tower industry has always been concerned that more training and certification is needed to ensure tower technicians can work safely at heights while building high-quality networks.Telecommunications Industry Foundation (TIF) is addressing a number of issues arising from the rapid advancement and deployment of the telecom infrastructure. Michelle Kang, TIF Chair and Scott Kisting, TIF Founding Board Member/Government Liaison discuss key tower industry issues and TIF initiatives with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of January 22, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of January 15, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of January 8, 2024.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of December 4, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of December 27, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

The digital infrastructure ecosystem including towers, fiber, data centers and small cells all operate under a similar ‘shared infrastructure' business model. But deploying these assets, particularly data centers, comes with very different land use requirements compared to erecting towers.Jake Remington, Senior Counsel, and Sandy Gomez, Partner, both with the law firm, Husch Blackwell, discuss with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor, the intricacies and requisite planning considerations for new data centers, particularly in small town or rural jurisdictions.Read a related Case Study on this topic here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of November 6, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of October 30, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of October 23, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

Co-hosts Patrick Halley, WIA CEO and President, and Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor recently chatted with Alex Gellman, Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Vertical Bridge on the Wireless Water Cooler podcast.In this lively and candid half hour talk, Gellman discussed a variety of issues including recent slowdowns in MNO activity and how Vertical Bridge is responding. He shared how the company is handling new macro tower builds and M&A strategy. In his first interview since being inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame, Gellman reflected on the state of the industry, how it has progressed in the past decade and where it has fallen short.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of October 16, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

With the slowdown in tower construction and RAN installation work, the challenge for infrastructure operators and their contractors is how to reallocate those skills and human resources to other new activity on the ground, particularly, fiber and increasingly, EV charging station projects. Learning Alliance offers a range training and certification programs that help field technicians expand their qualifications and skills to work in multidisciplinary environments.Cesar Ruiz, CEO of Learning Alliance shares with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor, his perspectives on how his firm is helping with this workforce transition.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of October 9, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

With continuing demand for broadband and mobile data connectivity, and the specter of artificial intelligence having a big upside impact, there are opportunities for infrastructure companies that are focused on a vertical market like towers, or a portfolio of assets that includes fiber, small cells, and data centers. At the same time, there are challenges to acquiring and owning and operating infrastructure assets. StratCap Wireless is a company that is steadily building its digital infrastructure portfolio. Todd Rowley, CEO of StratCap Wireless talks about the company's progress and outlook with John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor. Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of October 9, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

In August, Spartaco Group announced that it acquired Ronin Revolution, the designer and manufacturer of battery-powered ascenders.Nick Skrobot, CEO of Spartaco and Bryant Bertrand, CEO of Ronin join John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor, to discuss the acquisition, where Ronin and its battery-powered ascenders fit in Spartaco's lineup of professional tool manufacturers, and what the deal may mean for both companies going forward. Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of September 25, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show

This is your Inside Towers Weekly Recap for the week of September 18, 2023.  For more wireless infrastructure news, subscribe to our newsletter here.Support the show