This article is an excerpt from the Inside Tower Intelligence 2025 Vol 2 issue, available now. For more information or to subscribe, visit: insidetowers.com/intelligence
In the U.S. tower business, a Change of Ownership can mean a few things. The most direct explanation is that one tower owner is selling their tower or towers to another tower owner or operator. At the same time, however, the definition is broad enough to include an ownership transfer between entities within the same organization.
Understand that the Inside Towers Database does not identify a particular transaction as a sale. However, seeing the names of the parties involved provides a clear indication of what the Change of Ownership involves. At this juncture, a total of 855 Change of Ownership transactions has taken place.
Private tower companies have conducted most of the Change of Ownership transactions since the beginning of 2025, as shown in our database. Of the 855 transactions, 649 or 76 percent were among private tower companies. The most active companies were TowerVentures through its TVT III, LLC entity which had 168 transactions.
Various entities of Vertical Bridge, a DigitalBridge Group (NYSE: DBRG) portfolio company, had a total of 109 transactions. They were followed by APC Towers with 72, Diamond Communications with 62, Everest Infrastructure Partners’ EIP II Holdings, LLC with 56 and StratCap Wireless with45.
Among the public tower companies, American Tower (NYSE: AMT) affiliates made a total of 182 acquisition and ownership transfers. American Tower’s acquisitions included buying a block of 140 sites from APC Towers. SBA Communications (NASDAQ: SBAC) affiliates had four transactions.
Among the 20 mobile network operator transactions, affiliates of AT&T (NYSE: T), were involved in 18 of those and T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) had the other two.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
