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In March 2015 Verizon essentially sold off over 11000 cell towers to American Tower....

Are YOU going to let your competitor put HIS equipment on your leased property?

It's not uncommon for cell phone companies to do so. I don't know about the US but here is an example from Europe:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/23/telefonica_vodafone_network/

Also, towers are often not even owned by the networks, but they lease place on the tower from companies which own them, eg

http://www.americantower.com/

I am not sure about the characteristics of 700MHz communications, but it might be viable for Google to team up with one of the third party tower management firms, such as American Tower. These guys own over 20K towers in the US, and lease access to broadcasters of all types. Some of their towers may already be located in the geographical areas that would be of interest to Google.

I should also point out that some local governments (such as mine) have tower policies that require the owners to provide space to their competitors. So Google would have access to these towers as well.

I think that Google would be able to find existing tower sites, although coverage might not be optimal.

I've seen many of the towers they are talking about in the article. Many are being sold off as business bunkers or dismantled due to fiber optics being the medium of choice these days. The towers belong to what was called the 'long lines' division of AT&T.

The primary purpose of these towers was to relay AT&T's transcontinental long distance communications but they also seemed to be a source of backup communications for govt. sites around the US, including the Congressional Relocation Facility, hidden under the Greenbriar Hotel in SE West Virginia. Another use was to serve as a network feed for many local TV stations, a need that requires high bandwidth. This is of course before satellite took over for that purpose.

I have noticed that many sites have 4 identical antennas at the very top in a square shape. This is a configuration I recently observed on the rooftop of what I can assume was a secret service Chevy Suburban that was leading the motorcade for VP Dick Cheney. I saw the motorcade in Pittsburgh on Saturday as I exited the Fort Pitt tunnels on to the Parkway West, they were coming down the hill about to enter the tubes and go in to the city. I also saw another suburban behind the first that appeared to have a large dome on the roof, possibly a radar of some kind.

Some really good links with in-depth descriptions including interior photos of the bunkers:
http://www.drgibson.com/towers/
http://long-lines.net

Last year, there was an article here about some old AT&T bunkers and towers for sale. While it would be impracticle (if not impossible) to use all of these towers for 802.11 sites, their routes across the country would come in very handy. These maps would give you a good idea of what kind of line-of-sight you could get in various regions.

While I'm at it, here is an excellent site with more AT&T long-line info links:

Towers in Utah w/ good links

I was just looking into this too, for my area. :) A while back, I bought a Nextel cellular modem.. It's a PCMCIA card with a little antenna on it, that doesn't use my phone to work.. After I found my IP, I started going through whois's.. It turns out that they're using American Tower. Even the little town of Crystal River (probably no one here has even heard of it), has 4 American Tower towers. Here's the search results

If our building management doesn't get back to us with a good answer (like, we can put antennas on the roof), I'm going to call American Tower.. They have 5 towers on one hill, and one on a rooftop, not far from my office. I hadn't even noticed the 5 towers til I looked it up on their map. Then I was like "Hey, there they are!" :)

I'm sure there are other providers too, I just don't know any.. I just got lucky when I ran across this one..

Definitely not an expert but sheps idea sounds good. Especially when combined with a cheap tower in downtown B.F.E. .

If you know the bandwidth you can build your own antennas (maybe even your own repeater). Of course you could always build the thing (things?) and just nail it in an appropriately located treen on the high ground.

"The phrase "high tech" doesn't spring out at me here."

anonymous coward

After expressing interest in two sites, I received this email response:

From: Ross Elder
To: 'John Hoffman'
Subject: RE: Sites of interest
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 15:44:03 -0400

Please note that the message posted yesterday on Slash Dot is incorrect.
American Tower Corporation has only a limited number of Surplus towers for
sale that can be accessed by clicking "Sites For Sale" on our home page.
These are the only towers that are for sale. Please also note that these
Surplus sites are sold on a strictly "as is-where is", all cash basis.

If the site you are inquiring about is not on the "Sites For Sale" list,
then it is not for sale.

If you are interested in a Surplus site, please contact me via email.

If you are having difficulty accessing our website, please try again later
as we were experiencing technical difficulties earlier today.

Thanks,

Ross Elder
Senior VP/Development
American Tower Corporation

The actual list of available sites can be downloaded at:
http://www.americantower.com/acweb/ATCSDMAREP02/Pu blic%20Reports/Marketing/AvailableSitesList.xls

Here's the Google cache [216.239.51.100] of the site map to salivate over...

Some google cache hunting reveals that you can get the complete list in Excel format from... http://atcsdmaftp01.americantower.com/excelReports /NationalSiteList.xls. Now that "I got Mine!" I'll share the URL with you. :-)

WTF? Slashdot says I'm missing a subject or a body? I suppose that is the lameness-required filter that made me add this stupid paragraph.