With the rollout of 5G networks, wireless infrastructure assets, such as cellular towers, are becoming one of the most valuable real estate investments. With 300,000+ towers in the US and companies such as Uniti, AT&T, and Phoenix Tower entering large scale tower deals over the last 18 months, it prompts a natural question: what does buying and selling physical wireless infrastructure mean for security?
A Short History Lesson
20 years ago, when the mobile network industry was exploding, wireless telecom operators bought up a lot of real estate to build towers to support their networks. These real estate holdings created a bunch of assets and liabilities, independent of the primary wireless network business. Management came up with a grand idea: sell off the assets and lease them back to run their networks. And the towerco was born.
At the same time, smart entrepreneurs saw the opportunity to buy up land, erect a tower, and enter into lucrative contracts with carriers to host their antennas and equipment.
Where Keyless Access Control Comes In
Telecom towers are assets, being bought and sold all the time. The average tower transaction ranges from 1 to 50,000 towers. Sellers are looking to maximize the value of their portfolio for sale; buyers are looking to buy something that integrates into their existing operations, as seamlessly as possible, even at scale.
Buyers of telecom assets have the same concerns as buyers of a new home. They wonder if whether they have keys for all the locks, and whether they all the keys have been returned or if there are still some floating around out there. Home buyers often solve this by changing the locks. Now, imagine you’re buying many houses at once and they’re spread across the countryside, sometimes without road access. Changing the locks is expensive and time-consuming, and creates a liability for the new buyer. A keyless access control solution, like Sera4’s padlocks and Teleporte platform, can help alleviate these challenges for both buyers and sellers.
For sellers, including a wireless access control system in the sale increases the value of the portfolio because the locks can be sold as assets, along with the towers. Buyers are often willing to pay a premium because they trust that there aren’t any loose keys post-acquisition, and they’re acquiring a more efficient operation, complete with insights to help them optimize their processes.
The value of assets beyond the towers themselves isn’t traditionally part of the consideration process in these transactions, but it should be. If you’d like to learn more about how Sera4 is helping telecom, and other industries, safeguard their physical infrastructure assets, book a demo at www.sera4.com.