T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray continues his rounds of discussion in New Orleans as CTIA continues, this time with a comment to Reuters on T-Mobile’s purported tower sale. T-Mobile has previously said it would explore the sale of 7,000 of 37,000 wireless towers to gain some financial independence from parent Deutsche Telekom.
Ray told Reuters that the company has already received interest from companies that are already in the business of operating wireless towers. Analysts expect major tower operators like American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA Communications to long looks at the deal as T-Mobile hopes to see a sale price around the $2 to $3 billion mark. Ray wouldn’t mention any buyers specifically and emphasized that the evaluation process was still in the “very early days” and that is too early to tell just how much the tower sale could net T-Mobile.
A tower sale makes sense as T-Mobile decides to deploy integrated radios, something the carrier says will help speed network rollouts and cut the load put on cell sites. By integrating the radio and the antenna, carriers can reduce power consumption and space on cell towers.
I’d rather see T-Mobile sell the towers and raise capital in the hopes it could be put toward a wider network rollout, exclusive handset deals and more. Here’s hoping they get a ton of money should a deal go down.