Cell Tower Industry & Wireless Network Competition
In today's episode, we welcome Hugh Odom. He's a former AT&T attorney, and the founder and president of vertical consultant, a telecom consulting firm that has provided consulting advice for companies like Walmart, McDonald's, Disney, and governmental institutions like the United States Postal Service; New York Housing Authority; Veteran Affairs; the City of Atlanta and the City of Charlotte.
Hugh can share the evolving story of how the telecom industry has and will become more crucial based upon the COVID-19 pandemic. And the new normal that will result after COVID has run its course, as the founder and president of vertical consultants who wants to demystify not only what is being reported in the news. But what is going on behind the scenes inside companies like AT&T, Verizon, and T Mobile. He has been a resource in many newspapers, podcasts, radio shows, and blogs for years.
In today's episode we’re discussing…
[2:34] What vertical consultant is, and how they work
[4:52] Telecom industry has two basic parts to work, and how COVID has changed this industry
[9:28] Infrastructure and network capability plans due ‘new normal’
[11:44] Federal government role in network infrastructure
[14:01] How being communicated has become a basic need
[16:17] Why technology changes too fast and how the competition plays on that
[18:05] The background of 2G, 3G, and 4G technology and how would be 5G and even 6G
[21:35] Why this industry is like the oil industry was 100 years ago
[24:22] How competitors would face the cell industry changes
[27:47] Some advice on how to deal with cell tower lease and what determines the value
Hugh’s Top Tip’s
“Our primary mission, we work with a lot of different property from individual property owners all the way up to municipalities, universities, large corporations, and we help in a lot of areas, but two basic areas of the property or been engaged by a cell tower company or wireless carrier like AT&T, Verizon, to put something on their property, we help new value that negotiates and structure those agreements out”
“We work to try to make sure that the property or gets the best value today, best value going forward, and also protect them. So, if there are things that they don't understand exactly, the nature of these agreements could negatively impact their overall property”
“When COVID hit it, we have so many people more getting on the wireless infrastructure, and wireless networks are existing because they were trying to do work on their businesses handle business situations where they're working out their houses, telehealth issues, educational issues, all these things are handled, and you're pumping, pumping so much data, and you already didn't have enough infrastructure built out. So, we're gonna have to build out a whole lot more”
“We've jumped into the mode about which a cell phone used to be a luxury, it is a utility, besides air, water, and food, the one thing you rely upon most every day is communication, either through a phone call a text message, an email, whatever, if I tell people to look, I will make you a bet. Everybody in your family either can stop eating or drinking something for the next three hours I can't do anything online can't do with their phone”
“I use the comparison of the history of 100 years ago, the oil companies come out to the property owner and say, look, I want to lease your land, I'll give you a certain amount of rent for a month, I'll give you an escalator every year. And I get to keep all the oil, right, and what eventually had to happen, we saw the inequity in that arrangement, because of probably already getting a small portion of the value versus all the oil is being produced out of that property”.
“But from Exxon, I bet you the first question you would ask is how much oil you think you'll be getting? right? So, because you want to pay based on how much production they're getting from your property. It's the same thing with cell tower company, what you need to think about it, let's put a structure in place to make sure as increases in value as they get more value out of my property”.
“I'm being pulled up as well, if not, you're going to be left behind and that's why all the cell tower companies have huge not just such revenues but such profit margins because they have a model by which they fix their costs, they keep on getting more and more revenue, and their margins go up.”
“Remember back to the old Kodak camera. And Kodak really didn't care about selling you the camera, they want to sell you the film, they made more money off the film, the cell, the wireless carriers, they want to sell you the service, but what their bigger goal is today and more particularly move forward, they want to be able to sell you the content. And so that's the big play here with regards to all this with 3 carrier industry”
“But the big thing is understanding, you know, that knock comes on your door, whether it be to renegotiate the existing lease or enter into a new one is understanding the big word. People ask us a lot of times, what's the market rent in this area? How much should I be getting? That's we try to get people to just delete that word from their vocabulary when they deal with a cell tower lease, understand the value of that one site, one because that's how AT&T looks at it, that’s how Verizon looks at, etc.”
Mike’s Top Tip’s
“Everyone has a cell phone now. No matter what economic class you're in. And because landlines are going out of style. That's sometimes the only way that you can dial 911. Get telemedicine type of help. Order things, especially during emergencies. You know, just start thinking about cell service”.
ABOUT HUGH ODOM
Hugh Odom is a former AT&T attorney (for over 11 years) and the founder and president of Vertical Consultants, a telecom consulting firm that has provided consulting advice for companies like WalMart, McDonalds and Disney, and governmental institutions like the United States Postal Service; New York Housing Authority; Veteran Affairs; the City of Atlanta and the City of Charlotte. Hugh can share the evolving story of how the telecom industry (services, infrastructure, cell site locations) has and will become more crucial based upon the COVID-19 pandemic and the “new normal” that will result after COVID-19 has run its course. As the founder and President of Vertical Consultants, Hugh wants to demystify not only what is being reported in the news but what is going on behind the scenes inside companies like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
Hugh has been a resource to newspapers, podcasts, radio shows, and blogs for years.