Lawyers are investigating claims that landlords who lease property to wireless carriers and cell companies are being underpaid on cell tower land lease rates.

More than two-thirds of Americans use smart phones, and over the past several years, cell phone towers have popped up around the country to keep up with the growing demand for data.

Many of these towers are on private lands. Cell phone tower companies pay rent to landowners for use of their property. Reportedly, annual cell tower land lease rates run $45,000 on average.

In some cases, property owners may not be paid as much rent as they should be. A large part of why property owners are being paid insufficient cell tower land lease rates is a transfer of leases that occurred a few years back. To keep up with growing cell phone usage in the United States, cell phone tower operators have consolidated and transferred a massive number of leases from wireless carriers to cell phone tower operators.

Following these transfers, wireless carriers may be in breach of their leases, and they could owe property owners money. Many leases created during the transfer require tenants to make supplemental payments to the landlord to compensate for the transfer, but many wireless carriers have not been fulfilling their agreement to make such payments.

In many cases, many property owners are unaware that such provisions exist in their transfer leases, so they are unaware that they are owed money. In other cases, property owners simply don’t know how to negotiate fairly or advocate for themselves, so they get shortchanged in possibly lucrative rental agreements.

Lawyers have helped property owners get much higher rental rates for their properties.

Thousands of Cell Phone Towers

There are over 215,000 cell phone towers in the United States, owned by dozens of companies. Some of the largest cell phone tower owners are the following companies, ranked by the number of towers owned:

Crown Castle: 39,739 towers

American Tower: 28,739 towers

SBA Communications: 14,873 towers

United Cellular Co.: 4,802 towers

Verizon Wireless: 1,400 towers

T-Mobile Towers: 1,003 towers

Time Warner: 950 towers

Mediacom Communications: 750 towers

Charter Communications: 650 towers

Diamond Communications: 637 towers

There are dozens of other cell tower owners leasing sites all over the country.

Lawyers investigating cell tower land lease rates can help property owners determine if they are owed lease payments, and can assist the landowners in enforcing the leases. In the case of a lawsuit over cell tower land lease rates, a judge may determine that a tenant is liable both for past and future payments of supplemental rent, as they failed to honor the cell phone tower lease.

As a result of a successful lawsuit over cell tower land lease rates, property owners can recoup damages and owed funds, and can be compensated for legal fees.

In other cases, lawyers can help property owners renegotiate contracts to receive higher cell tower land lease rates.