Top U.S. Tower Companies Expect Continued Spending on 5G

In the U.S., the 5G cycle is “playing out in line with our original expectations,” American Tower CEO Steven Vondran told analysts last week as the company reported Q2 results. Carriers continue upgrading their networks as they “work toward 2026 5G coverage goals and begin early densification or … colocation activity to improve network quality,” he said.

The company reported that revenue rose 3.2% over the previous Q2, reaching $2.6 billion. Net income decreased 58.1% to $381 million, “primarily due to foreign currency losses.”

Vondran said “significant differences” in midband rollouts among U.S. carriers mean a steady stream of investments. American Tower isn’t seeing “the pipeline of applications dry up,” and carriers aren’t canceling projects, he said. In some cases, there has been “a little bit slower cadence in terms of signing leases."

UScellular, much of which was recently purchased by T-Mobile, represented less than 1% of American Tower’s U.S. and Canada property revenue, Vondran said. “What we don't know yet is what T-Mobile plans to do with those sites,” he said, adding that T-Mobile hadn't been able to discuss the issue before the deal closed. EchoStar’s Dish Wireless represents about 4% of U.S. revenue, he added. “We continue to watch the situation like everybody else does.”

American Tower is also watching tariffs closely, as is every company, Vondran said, and it has needed to have a strategy for dealing with supply-chain issues since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Crown Castle interim CEO Daniel Schlanger told analysts last month that the company is seeing higher leasing activity “across the board from all of our customers and across our footprint.” That’s because carriers need to “augment their network capacity” as a result of subscriber growth and customer changes due to churn, he said. “Subscriber growth and increased churn usually leads to an increase in activity because the network needs to be augmented to keep up with the incremental demand that's being placed on it.”

Asked about the 5G deployment cycle, Schlanger noted that the 4G cycle took as long as 12 years before the latest generation of wireless started to be deployed. “I don't think there's anything that would lead us to believe that the 5G cycle would be any shorter” -- and it may be even longer. He also said the company has “minimal exposure” from UScellular exiting as a carrier.

Crown Castle reported site rental revenue of just more than $1 billion in Q2, down about $56 million from the year-earlier quarter. Net income was $291 million, up $40 million.

In March, Crown Castle announced deals to sell its fiber unit to Zayo and its small-cell business to EQT for a total of $8.5 billion as the company focuses on the macro tower sector (see 2503140021). The board “is actively searching for a CEO” and isn’t waiting for those deals to close, Schlanger said. “I think that they want to find a CEO who is no longer interim as quickly as they can” to “clear up another level of uncertainty at our company.”

Crown Castle is on track to close the deals in the first half of 2026, Schlanger added. “We have already started receiving state-level approvals, and we are actively engaged with the [DOJ] as we process a second request for information that we recently received."

“Domestic activity remained very strong” in Q2 “as our carrier customers continued to invest meaningfully in their wireless networks,” SBA CEO Brendan Cavanagh said in a news release after the close of U.S. financial markets. “New U.S. leasing business signed up during the quarter was ahead of our expectations and benefitted from continued high levels of new colocations.”

Site lease revenue was $631.8 million in Q2, up $5.3 million over the same quarter last year, SBA said. Net income was $225.7, million, up $66.2 million. The company also announced that it's selling off its Canadian assets. Cavanaugh was slated to speak with analysts after our deadline.