Through it’s venture capital arm Comcast Ventures, Comcast is expanding its reach in the cell tower management business through CTI Towers. CTI will own, operate, and develop cell towers throughout the U.S. They begin with 800 towers under management, which were previously owned by Comcast subsidiaries. The company will be led by Anthony F. Peduto.
According to a Comcast press release, “CTI Towers will actively lease tower space to wireless operators and other tenants, creating additional tower capacity for rapidly evolving businesses and technologies across the U.S.”
“Newly formed CTI Towers will work with mobile operators and other service providers to improve the quality of the wireless network experience to their customers by leveraging the extensive footprint of urban and suburban towers in CTI’s portfolio,” said Dave Zilberman, Principal at Comcast Ventures.
The move consolidates Comcast’s wireless tower business, providing a more coherent way to leverage an important facet of the wireless business. The cable industry has had mixed success in wireless. Comcast is clearly hoping to hedge its bets a little, given the explosive demand for backhaul.
CTI already counts AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Cricket, and Clear Wireless as its customers.
Re: "Comcast is clearly hoping to hedge its bets a little, given the explosive demand for backhaul."
this has turned out to be a tremendous and lucrative decision for comcasts and it's backhaul (infrastructure) business.
Backhaul has indeed become the fasted growing segment of the cellular business. It's not towers we need so much as the way to get the data to and from customers quicker that is important (profitable)