A sale of T-Mobile's tower system could net parent company Deutsche Telekom as much as $3 billion in an auction. According to Macquarie analyst Kevin Smithen, American Tower Corp., Crown Castle International Corp. and SBA Communications Corp are all interested in the towers. The analyst estimates that the towers could fetch $2.25 billion although competitive bidding could bring the price to as much as $3 billion. T-Mobile is looking to sell the towers to fund the purchase of additional spectrum, and an LTE network and to sign Prince Fielder according to Deutsche Telekom's CFO Timotheus Hoettges. The carrier would then lease back the same towers from the company that buys them.
The 7,500 cell towers owned by T-Mobile is the largest number of such towers currently up for sale. Sprint did a sale-leaseback three years ago when it sold 3,080 towers to TowerCo for $680 million. Sprint used the proceeds to reduce debt. Thanks to the leaseback arrangement, T-Mobile will not be losing any tower space nor will it lose any areas of coverage.
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