Fiddling on the Roof

You might think that offering a landlord thousands of dollars to put your antenna on top of its buildings would have it scrambling for your business. Think again.

The average building in an average city where carriers need coverage is a corporate-owned skyscraper, and $10,000 a year isn't going to convince most landlords to make changes to accommodate a carrier. That's where companies such as 3G Solutions (www.3gsolutions.net) and RF Comsites.com (www.rfcomsites.com) come in.

“Hotels have some nice properties,” said Jim Righeimer, RF Comsites partner. “But, if there's anything painful about (the deal), they don't want to waste their time.”

The carrier's thinking it's giving all this money, but to the hotel, it's really nothing.

Righeimer's company works to pre-lease buildings in Southern California so carriers don't have to deal with landlords on roof-right acquisitions. He said RF Comsites has prearranged agreements with most of the major carriers and just adds language to the contract to reflect a particular roof.

“Obviously, everyone wants to get the most money they can,” he said. “But one carrier paying $1,500 a month is not something (landlords) are going to get excited about. Usually what happens is we end up over time getting them two, three, even four carriers up there. Then, it becomes a number that gets to the bottom line and makes a difference.”

Working with landlords is something 3G Solutions also understands. Mike Bickford, 3G Solutions president, said carriers often are frustrated with the process of rooftop siting.

Once carriers know they have to get a building in a certain area, they have to identify who owns the building, and that's not always easy, Bickford said. Because these deals are out of the norm, even if they find a receptive building owner, it takes longer to negotiate an agreement.

But carriers and landlords are beginning to understand one another and find common ground. Carriers now are more likely to pay what landlords expect, and landlords are warming to the idea of leasing rooftop sites because of the extra money it offers.

“It is a way to get revenue from the building that comes in every month, is predictable and doesn't disrupt their tenant base,” Bickford said. “If it's an apartment building, it's almost like having a couple extra apartments on the roof.”

Challenging Sites

Wireless broadband carriers face unique challenges with rooftop sites because there's no way they can work around them.

“The cellular business is split about one-third roofs and two-thirds towers,” said Mark Salter, XO Communications (www.xo.com) vice president of broadband access deployment. “They put towers in places because there are no other buildings around. I don't care about those places, because I only want to go to buildings where there's enough bandwidth demand.”

XO tries to site only on top of buildings that are connected to its fiber ring, but it still has to deal with landlords. Salter said the biggest challenge is getting the rights to the roofs. “Once you get up there, there aren't that many challenges that can't be overcome,” but, getting the rights and negotiating with the landlords is tough.

“The Bell companies, by default, always have access to buildings,” Salter said. “If we had equal terms for getting into a building like the Bells do, this would be a lot easier.”

Jim Dunn, AirFiber CEO, disagreed (www.airfiber.com), saying he thought the FCC had been cooperative in making sure there wasn't a monopoly on building access.

“When we started the company, one of our biggest fears was that getting access to rooftops by our carriers was going to be a big issue,” he said. “That has proved not to be the case.”

However, AirFiber, which supplies wireless optical networking equipment, does more than half of its sales overseas, and Dunn said he has found that international rules regarding rooftop access are much more favorable to carriers than those rules found in the United States.

Technological Help

The development of smaller antennas and RF-friendly disguise materials is making it easier for carriers to site on rooftops.

Many landlords are unsure whether to allow carriers on their roofs because they perceive antennas as ugly. Smaller antenna sets offered by companies such as AirFiber and EMS Wireless (www.emswireless.com) are helping rooftop sites look less obtrusive and can save carriers money.

“Landlords want to have a lease for each piece of equipment,” said Jeff Vann, EMS Wireless product marketing manager. “They often charge per antenna. So, if we can put a group of antennas in one package, then we're saving money.”

Vann said his company is working to shrink the size of antennas so carriers have a better chance of convincing landlords and zoning boards to allow sites.

RF Comsites' Righeimer said his company is tackling the problem by trying to match rooftop sites to the surrounding buildings so they don't stand out.

“We'll put some RF-invisible material there that matches,” he said. “You think it's just a screen and don't realize that there are antennas behind it.”

XO also tries to keep its antennas as small as possible. Its radio antennas are between 1 and 2 feet in height, so they're small and unobtrusive, Salter said.

But XO also needs to locate its hubs, and those can have as many as 20 radios each.

“That is the case where the landlord would be concerned about aesthetics,” Salter said. “We're in the process right now of putting up stealth antenna walls so you wouldn't even know the radios are up there.”

Rooftops sites often pit landlord against carrier and create more challenges than carriers would like to face. However, Salter said he would go with wireless rooftop technology over traditional fiber technology, despite the problems, for three reasons: It's cheaper than fiber on average; it's faster; and it's economically more flexible.

“The majority of fiber build is construction costs,” Salter said. “Once you have a construction crew out there, that money is based on those people hours and time in breaking up cement.”