Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Verizon will add access to over 4,400 Array towers (formerly US Cellular) through a new multi-year colocation agreement.
- The deal reflects Verizon’s rent-instead-of-own strategy, following its exit from tower ownership last year, which has become the industry norm for all major US carriers.
- Network improvements are likely to be real but fairly incremental, with limited short-term impact for most users.
Earlier this year, T-Mobile formally acquired US Cellular’s customer base, retail footprint, and some of its spectrum in the process. That said, the company behind US Mobile continues as Array. Going forward, Array’s core business is to license its massive collection of former US Cellular towers to other companies, with T-Mobile signing a deal in May to use over 2,000 of them to boost its own coverage. Now it seems Verizon is making a deal of its own, committing to the use of over 4,400 new towers in the deal.
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The new multi-year deal will see Verizon gain colocation access to Array’s nationwide tower locations coast-to-coast. That means Verizon can use the towers to install its own equipment, but that doesn’t necessarily preclude other carriers from doing the same. It is expected that Verizon will use this infusion of additional towers to strengthen its existing 5G network.
Why rent versus building its own tower spaces? Verizon no longer has ownership of the towers it uses after selling the remaining 6,339 towers to Vertical Bridge last year for $3.3 billion. It isn’t alone here either, as all the major carriers have started to shed their own towers in favor of renting space for their equipment. In other words, this is the industry norm anymore.
Of course, the most important question is how this deal will impact customers. While Verizon doesn’t give out direct numbers on how many sites it operates equipment on, based on what I could dig up, though, I’d say this is a pretty small fraction of its existing sites. Still, it’s a decent upgrade that could eventually have a positive impact on 5G performance.
US Cellular’s existing towers were also most prominently located in underserved areas of the country, and so this could strengthen the carrier in some of the areas it is currently at its weakest, including certain rural and suburban pockets of the country. How noticeable will these changes be, and how quickly will they happen? That’s much harder to guess at this point.
It’s likely the upgrades will be incremental, and while it might not affect a large swath of the Verizon network, it will improve its overall blueprint, and it could help it in some of the areas it currently struggles the most. Regardless of what happens, the bright side is that even with Verizon at its current low point, it’s not just sitting idly by and is working to do what it can to improve its network performance and reputation.
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