Oct 30, 2001 12:00 PM,

Leap president urges tower companies to use slowdown to their advantage

By Mary Corcoran, Staff Writer

At the 2001 Tower Summit & Trade Show today in Las Vegas, Sue Swenson, president and COO of Leap Wireless (www.leapwireless.com ) told tower companies to view the economic slowdown as an opportunity.

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“While this may be a slowing time for the tower operators,” she said in an interview last week, “It’s an opportunity for them to tighten up some of their processes and improve their documentation.”

Swenson, who was a keynote speaker this morning at the summit, said some tower companies created and added to their portfolios so quickly that they don’t have a good grasp of what they own.

“Their documentation is a little lacking,” she said.

Swenson said Leap has had to deal with that problem itself as it tries to do a fast buildout.

“We ended up doing a lot of the documentation and getting certificates ourselves,” she said, “because the tower companies did not have that documentation in their files.”

Now that many carriers are slowing down their buildout, tower companies should have more time to deal with paperwork, which will ultimately improve their business. Swenson said Leap wasn’t changing its strategy in view of the bad market. Leap always has been conscious of cost, building few of its own towers.

“We try to, as often as possible, put our sites on co-location,” she said. “Our co-location can be as high as 90% in some markets depending on the portfolio of sites there. It also allows us to be better community folks because of the aesthetics and the concern people have about the proliferation of towers.

“We do build when we have to, but it’s minimal.”

Right now, tower companies should be innovative, Swenson said. Those who are will make it through these tough times and thrive tomorrow.

“You can view this as a bad situation,” Swenson said. “Or, you can take advantage of it. There’s always a slow period. Things will pick up again. The more tower companies can be prepared to provide a quality product, the more they will be successful as we come out of this.”