Few technological advances have permeated modern society like the cellular telephone. While Motorola released the first handheld portable device in 1973, it wasn’t until the release of the first Apple iPhone in 2007 that the smartphone started its exponential climb in popularity.

Now Americans are willing to pay dearly for this service. Tower owners also pay mobile tower lease rates; however, these mobile tower lease rates may not be high enough. According to statisticbrain.com, there are 215,000 cell towers on U.S. soil today, compared to the 900 that existed in 1985.

To provide the best cellular coverage, these towers are often erected on private or municipally-owned property, as well as on the tops of commercial office or government buildings, and open land often, but not always, located on hilltops.

On average, a cell phone tower costs about $150,000 to erect. Tower owners must then pay mobile tower lease rates to the landowner for the right to have it placed where it would provide good cellular coverage. Statiticbrain.com reveals that mobile tower lease rates average $45,000 annually.

While building capital and average mobile tower lease rates to landowners combine to create a picture of an expensive business, consider that that tower can be essentially sublet to multiple cell phone service providers. This subletting can then become a massive revenue machine. According to an article in the timesfreepress.com, one tower can bring in a gross profit margin of nearly 80%.

Change Afoot Means Landowners May Be Owed More Money

It used to be that major wireless carriers strictly rented space on cell towers and left the owners to negotiate and pay mobile tower lease rates. Recently, however, some wireless carriers have decided to get into the lucrative cell tower business.

The top two examples of this are AT&T and Verizon who have signed on as business partners with tower owners in thousands of land leases. In effect, these leases have been transferred to these two wireless carriers.

Under these and similar circumstances, land owners may be due supplementary rent. Unfortunately, because lease clauses allowing for this are either buried deep within a contract or obscured by lease language, many of these rents go uncollected.

Hiring a knowledgeable cell phone tower lease attorney may be a beneficial course of action for a landowner to take if there have been recent additions to the named land lessees on a cell tower.

The land owner might be due rent that is a percentage of profits each quarter. Other provisions in the lease may provide for additional revenue for the landowner.

Do you have a cell tower on your private or municipally-owned property? Do you want to make sure that you or your agency is not being taken for granted? Depending on the terms of your cell tower land lease, you may be owed thousands of dollars in back rent.