Tower company Crown Castle International expects rapid growth of ...
Tower company Crown Castle International expects rapid growth of wireless infrastructure with the 700 MHz auction and carriers taking over licenses bought in last year’s advanced wireless services auction, CEO John Kelly said Wednesday in a call with analysts.…
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The company’s loss widened Q3 to $72.2 million from $20.8 million a year earlier, it said. Revenue was up 75 percent to $351.7 million. “The backdrop for this performance is the continued growth in the broader wireless market,” Kelly said. “We believe the need for coverage will continue to increase as carriers continue to build out their networks to support these data-centric and bandwidth intensive applications.” Kelly cited data on wireless growth recently reported by CTIA. For example, wireless minutes used in the U.S. rose 18 percent in a year. “In my opinion, that’s an unbelievably large increase on a percentage basis given that the base is so large,” he said. Crown Castle is bound to benefit from the 700 MHz auction no matter who the big winners are, he said. “Our assets are the best located in the tower industry,” Kelly said. “We are in a favorable position to partner with the ultimate winners of the auction to deploy their new networks or deploy new applications using this spectrum on sites in place today.”