Crown Castle Inc. (NYSE:CCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jay Brown: Sure. On the location point, I probably would not draw a lot of distinction between central business districts and urban, more suburban areas that are densely populated. The usage, as you think about it on a per subscriber basis, while there is some differences over time, there has been less of a differentiation by the consumer in terms of usage. And therefore, the network reflects that. So, when we see the carriers deploy the first phase, there are a mix of dense suburban markets as well as what you would think of as the most dense part markets down in the central business district. We will see leasing in both of those kind of areas initially. Less likely for us to see that leasing early €“ in the early phases of deployment of a generational change.

Less likely to see that in more rural applications or rural assets. So, we have not seen that as much. To the second part of your question, how far do they need to go before they start to do infill, it’s €“ some of it is a matter of how they allocate their capital and the need to provide geographic coverage. The other part of the answer is where do they see traffic growth and where are the holes in the network that they need to do infill in order to improve the network. And there is not a big picture answer really, frankly, to give to that question. It varies market-by-market. And so in some markets, 2 years or 3 years ago at the very beginning of the launch of 5G, they already knew where they were going to need infill sites. We started seeing small cells and demand for small cells as they started to think about infill long before even devices were out and usage has started to increase.

So, they had a view based on population usage, their customer base, etcetera, that there was going to need to be an infill of sites in certain geographies. And so in other geographies, we haven’t seen that yet. So, it really is €“ it’s not a big picture question that I could give you an answer that would be helpful. But it’s driven by underlying data usage. And that is why so often in my prepared remarks, I talk about what we are seeing in terms of data usage, what the carriers are seeing in terms of data usage because that long-term is the driver of the need of our infrastructure. And we believe that macro trend is very healthy and will continue. And we will continue to see the need for both macro sites and small cells from an infill standpoint.

Nick Del Deo: Okay. That’s helpful. And then maybe one more if I can. Just thinking back, it’s been a little over 2 years since you struck your deal with DISH. It was a new and unique structure on the tower side and had a fiber component to it. Now that it’s been in force for some time, I was just wondering if you could comment on your satisfaction with that novel structure you chose and the degree to which it’s accomplishing and what you hope to accomplish?

Jay Brown: Well, first, we are doing everything we can to help DISH get launched, and we have got teams of people that are very focused on that. DISH has been working hard to get their nationwide network deployed. And I hope that they would say about us, we have been a good partner to help them get there. I know our teams are focused on it 24/7, 365. So, it’s been a good partnership with them, and we are happy to have them as a customer. It has accomplished what we expected. We expected that the fact that we got them locked up first would mean that our network would benefit from them designing their network around our existing assets. We have seen that play out. We believe we have gotten an outsized share of the overall opportunity as they deploy the network.

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