Crown Castle

Co-founder Ted B. Miller Jr. served as Crown Castle’s chief executive from 1994 to 2002, was also executive chairman from 1999 to 2002, and oversaw the company’s 1998 initial public offering.⁠[1]

The listed company, Crown Castle International Corp., was organized as a Delaware corporation on April 20, 1995, with its headquarters in Houston, Texas.⁠[2]

After the BBCBBCThe BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is the United Kingdom’s public broadcaster. Its predecessor was the British Broadcasting Company, formed in 1922, and since 1927 it has been established under a Royal Charter. It provides television, radio, and online services in the UK, is funded mainly by the television licence fee, and broadcasts worldwide in multiple languages through BBC World Service.Open the full entry’s home service transmission business was privatized under the Broadcasting Act 1996, it was sold to Crown Castle’s CTI unit in February 1997, giving the company the BBC’s national broadcast transmission infrastructure and network services.⁠[3]

Crown Castle had planned to sell 31.25 million shares at $17 to $19 each, but on August 18, 1998, it priced its offering at $13 a share and expected to receive about $151 million, with Lehman Brothers as lead underwriter. The Houston tower company then owned or managed more than 1,200 towers and rooftop sites in the U.S., the U.K. and Puerto Rico.⁠[4]

Its common stock was then listed on the Nasdaq National Market, and it had 928 employees on March 1, 1999.⁠[3]

In March 1999 the company formed a joint venture with Bell Atlantic Mobile covering about 1,458 towers and reached agreements covering about 1,850 BellSouth towers, about 650 Powertel towers and up to 821 One2One towers in the U.K. On a pro forma basis it owned or managed 6,136 towers at the end of 1998, including 1,686 in the U.K.⁠[5]

On January 12, 2007, Crown Castle completed its acquisition of Global Signal in a deal valued at about $5.8 billion, including about $1.8 billion of Global Signal debt. The combined company had more than 22,000 wireless sites in the U.S. and more than 1,300 in Australia.⁠[6]

In 2012 the company acquired a portfolio of towers from T-MobileT-MobileT-Mobile (T-Mobile US, Inc.) is one of the major U.S. wireless carriers, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and Overland Park, Kansas, and controlled by Deutsche Telekom. Its predecessor was VoiceStream Wireless, founded in 1994; it listed on Nasdaq after combining with MetroPCS in 2013 and merged with Sprint in 2020.Open the full entry and bought NextG Networks, a small-cell network company.⁠[7]

On March 7, 2012, S&P Indices announced that Crown Castle International Corp. would join the S&P 500S&P 500The S&P 500 is a U.S. large-cap equity index compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices. It includes 500 leading companies, covers about 80% of available market capitalization and is described by S&P DJI as “widely regarded as the best single gauge of large-cap U.S. equities.”Open the full entry, replacing Constellation EnergyConstellation EnergyConstellation Energy Corporation is a Baltimore-based American power producer with the nation’s largest nuclear fleet, spun off from Exelon in February 2022.Open the full entry Group, with the effective date to be announced.⁠[8]

On October 20, 2013, the company announced it would pay $4.85 billion in cash for the exclusive right to lease and operate about 9,700 AT&TAT&TAT&T (AT&T Inc.) is a telecommunications company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its predecessor was SBC Communications, a regional holding company created in the 1984 breakup of the Bell System; SBC merged with the original AT&T Corp. in 2005 and adopted its name, and it has since operated a nationwide wireless network and fiber broadband, at one time also owning DIRECTV and WarnerMedia.Open the full entry towers for a weighted average term of about 28 years, with purchase options totaling about $4.2 billion.⁠[9]

The AT&T transaction closed in December 2013, and those towers made up about 24 percent of the company’s towers. Effective January 1, 2014, the company began operating as a real estate investment trust (REIT) for U.S. federal income tax purposes.⁠[7]

The company bought Sunesys (Quanta Fiber Networks) in 2015, FPL FiberNet from NextEra EnergyNextEra EnergyNextEra Energy, Inc. is one of the largest electric power and energy infrastructure companies in North America. Headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida, it owns Florida Power & Light (FPL), America’s largest electric utility, serving about 12 million people in Florida, and NextEra Energy Resources, one of the largest energy infrastructure developers in the U.S.Open the full entry in January 2017 and Wilcon in June 2017. By the end of January 2018 it had about 40,000 towers, about 60,000 route miles of fiber and about 4,500 employees.⁠[10]

On November 1, 2017, the company completed its acquisition of fiber network operator Lightower (LTS Group Holdings) for about $7.1 billion in cash, making Lightower an indirect wholly owned subsidiary.⁠[11]

The board entered into a cooperation agreement with shareholder Elliott and set up a fiber review committee, which from December 2023 worked with advisers including Morgan StanleyMorgan StanleyMorgan Stanley is an American global financial services firm that grew from an investment banking partnership into a publicly traded financial group spanning investment banking, securities trading, wealth management, and investment management.Open the full entry and BofA Securities on the valuation, potential buyers and use of proceeds for the fiber and small-cell business.⁠[12]

That month CEO Jay Brown, who had been with the company for nearly 25 years, announced his departure.⁠[13][14]

Anthony Melone served as interim CEO from January 16, 2024. Steven Moskowitz, who had spent more than 12 years at American TowerAmerican TowerAmerican Tower Corporation is a Boston-based real estate investment trust that owns, operates and develops multitenant communications real estate.Open the full entry, became president and CEO and joined the board on April 11, 2024.⁠[13]

Through his investment vehicle Boots Capital, Ted Miller nominated four director candidates, including himself, for election at the 2024 annual meeting.⁠[1]

The annual meeting was scheduled for May 22, 2024.⁠[15]

Preliminary results from the company’s proxy solicitor showed that all 12 of the company’s nominees were elected, leaving Miller’s slate without seats.⁠[14]

The company ended its fiber review and agreed to sell its small-cell business to EQTEQTEQT is a global private markets investment manager that originated in Sweden, with businesses spanning private capital, infrastructure, real estate, and secondaries. It was founded in 1994 by Conni Jonsson with the support of Investor AB, AEA Investors, and SEB, and listed in Stockholm in 2019; it has since expanded by integrating Exeter, LSP, Baring Private Equity Asia, and Coller Capital.Open the full entry and its fiber solutions business to Zayo for $8.5 billion in total, expected to close in the first half of 2026.⁠[16]

It also cut its annualized dividend to about $4.25 per share and recorded a goodwill impairment of about $5.0 billion for fiber.⁠[16]

In late March 2025 the board removed Moskowitz as CEO and named CFO Dan Schlanger interim CEO. The company said the decision was unrelated to financial performance, ethics or compliance, and Chairman P. Robert Bartolo said “now is the right time to make this leadership transition.”⁠[17]

On August 4, 2025, the board appointed Christian Hillabrant president and chief executive officer, effective September 15, 2025.⁠[18]

Hillabrant had been CEO and chairman of the management board of Vantage Towers AG, earlier served as COO of Tillman Infrastructure and held senior posts at T-Mobile, Ericsson and Samsung. Interim CEO Schlanger was to become executive vice president and chief transformation officer overseeing the sale.⁠[19]

On January 12, 2026, the company delivered a notice of default and termination to DISH Wireless over missed payments and sought to recover more than $3.5 billion in remaining payments. DISH has argued that EchoStar’s spectrum sales were forced by Federal Communications Commission pressure and justify cancelling future payments.⁠[20]

EchoStar had earlier agreed to sell spectrum to AT&T and SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry. Crown Castle has filed suit asking a court to rule that its contract with DISH Wireless “remains in full force,” arguing that the spectrum sales were a “voluntary business decision.”⁠[21]

Site rental revenues from continuing operations for 2025 were $4.049 billion, down 5 percent from $4.268 billion in 2024; net income was $444 million and AFFO was $1.904 billion. The company expected the DISH terminations to cut 2026 site rental revenues by $220 million and planned to keep its annualized dividend at $4.25 per share.⁠[22]

In 2025, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon WirelessVerizonVerizon (Verizon Communications Inc.) is one of the largest telecommunications carriers in the United States, formed in 2000 through the merger of Bell Atlantic, one of the “Baby Bells,” and GTE. Headquartered in New York City, it operates a nationwide wireless network, Fios fiber broadband and communications services for businesses and government, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.Open the full entry together accounted for about 90 percent of site rental revenues.⁠[23]

The company also planned to cut about 20 percent of its workforce, leaving about 1,250 full-time employees, with the reductions finished by the end of the first quarter of 2027.⁠[21]

The company closed the sale of its fiber solutions business to Zayo and its small-cell business to Arium Networks, an EQT Active Core Infrastructure fund, for about $8.4 billion net. Hillabrant said Crown Castle “is now the only U.S. focused, large publicly traded pure-play tower company.”⁠[24]

Each of the two businesses carried an enterprise value of $4.25 billion, and Zayo is owned by an investor group led by DigitalBridge. The company planned to use the proceeds to cut debt by more than $7.0 billion and buy back $1.0 billion of shares.⁠[25]

In the first half of 2026, site rental revenues were $1.928 billion ($2.019 billion a year earlier) and net income was $245 million, including a $275 million loss from discontinued operations. The company repurchased $1.017 billion of stock, and about $3.5 billion due from DISH Wireless was excluded from contracted amounts.⁠[26]