August 18, 2015 — BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ZAYO), a global provider of bandwidth infrastructure, continues to expand on its mobile infrastructure strategy in major U.S. markets. The company’s approach leverages initial anchor fiber-to-the-tower (FTT) sales to major wireless carriers. This positions Zayo to provide additional services to wireless carriers and high-bandwidth non-wireless customers through follow-on sales on or near the initial anchor FTT network builds.
“Follow-on sales to both mobile carriers and a wide range of other customers are leveraging the fiber we are building to support FTT deployments”
Over the 18 months ending in June 2015, Zayo has sold additional services to over 800 macro tower and small cell sites that leverage previous anchor FTT network builds. Zayo estimates these services will generate a greater than 20 percent unlevered return (based on the initial term of the underlying contracts) on approximately $23 million of incremental net capital investments. The total volume of follow-on macro tower and small cell sales continues to grow, with sales (measured in terms of total monthly recurring revenue) in the first half of calendar year 2015 increasing by more than 50 percent compared to the same period in 2014.
“Follow-on sales to both mobile carriers and a wide range of other customers are leveraging the fiber we are building to support FTT deployments,” said Matt Erickson, president and COO of Zayo’s Physical Infrastructure segment. “School districts, healthcare providers, and technology companies use the fiber to interconnect their key locations and to connect to their remote cloud and data center environments.”
Wireless carriers continue to densify their networks by adding new macro cells and small cells to improve both coverage and capacity. According to a recent report published by SNL Kagan, the number of U.S. macro cell sites is expected to increase by nearly 25 percent over the next five years, totaling more than 380,000 sites in 2020.
“Based on the economics of FTT deployments, and the accelerating demand for macro towers and small cells, we will continue to pursue our strategy of seeking anchor tenants and making capital investments in wireless infrastructure,” Erickson said.
For more information on Zayo, please visit www.zayo.com.
