New investigations about partnerships between wireless carriers and cell tower companies reveal that landowners may be eligible to receive more rent money from cell tower lease rates.

Only a handful of companies dominate the market for these cell towers. In most cases, they are making payments of cell tower lease rates directly to landowners in exchange for putting a tower on someone else’s property. When changes are made to those agreements and outside partners brought in, however, the landowners may not be notified despite being eligible for higher cell tower lease rates.

Current cell tower lease rates may be depriving landowners of rent money owed to them because of new partnerships between the wireless carriers and the cell tower companies that lease the property.

New Tower Agreement Raises Awareness about Lease Rates

Verizon and AT&T have recently struck a tower agreement in order to diversify vendors for consumers, but this means that landowners could be entitled to higher cell tower lease rates. Hundreds of new cell phone towers will now be leased from Tillman Infrastructure for AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications. Both of those communication companies hope that this move will improve their leverage in negotiations with U.S. tower vendors.

The cell tower market is currently handled by SBA Communications Corp, American Tower Corp, and Crown Castle International Corp. Verizon and AT&T are the two biggest wireless carriers in the United States, but these business decisions could have implications for landowners who are being paid cell tower lease rates for use of their property for the towers to transmit wireless signals.

Consumers are using increasing amounts of cellular data in recent months and years, meaning that cell tower lease rates may become a more pertinent issue for landowners as these mobile carriers attempt to garner more of the market. Carriers are always looking for opportunities to identify alternative partners to reduce their dependence on the three biggest companies with cell tower lease rates.

Many cell phone towers are placed on private property, meaning that the owners of that property are entitled to cell tower lease rates and it’s expected that with growing demand for more services and data that consumers can anticipate this being a booming market.

The average annual cell tower lease rate is approximately $45,000 paid from the cell tower owner to the property owner. There are more than 215,000 cell towers throughout the United States and this number is often growing. Property owners, however, may be owed additional cell tower credit in the form of cell tower lease rates because supplemental payments may be ordered if the cell tower land leases include tenants who are breaching this provision.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars may be owed in cell tower lease rates to the landlord if it can be found that the tenant is liable for past and future payments of supplemental rent due to their failure to honor the original terms of the cell phone tower lease.

If this applies to you, you may benefit from getting further information about your legal rights.