How to connect landowners willing to lease/sell property to carriers and towercos

Four years ago, Tiago Albino was struggling to lead a metropolitan network project for a group of Brazilian banks, but he ran into a problem familiar to most people in the tower industry – few people were prepared to lease space for their antenna. Tiago decided to bridge the gap by building the MyTower portal, where people interested in leasing or selling property suitable for telecoms structures could list their sites, and where site hunters, towercos and MNOs could identify readily available sites. Just three months after launch, Tiago is already indexing over 2,000 sites….

TowerXchange: Please introduce yourself and tell us where did the idea for MyTower come from?

I have been an expert in telecommunications for the last ten years, working for various technology companies. In 2011, I led a metropolitan network construction project for a group of Brazilian banks. During this project, I experienced all the difficulties that operators and towercos have in renting sites – in particular, the difficulty of finding people who want to rent or sell their properties for the purpose of installing of towers and antennas.

After four years of studying the market in the field, I identified that there was no property listings portal for telecom real estate in Brazil. All the portals that existed and exist now are focused on the sale or lease of real estate for residential or commercial purposes other than telecom. When a major publication in Brazil featured a story about cell phone towers, the forums and comments section had huge supply of potential real estate for operators. People read the article and at the end offered their property. However, this is an inefficient way of identifying sites because the operator does not have time to be reading discussion forums.

That’s when the idea was born to create a Property Classifieds portal for telecom operators. In fact the MyTower portal can be used by major carriers, towercos, small and medium sized Internet service providers, radio and TV stations. The advantage for them is to find a property in their desired region, already knowing an estimation of the cost, size of the area available and knowing that the person wants to do business with the telecom industry, which is essential because they are seeking long-term contracts.

TowerXchange: What’s your business model – how does MyTower make money?

MyTower is funded by property listing fees paid by homeowners, asset liquidators, property and real estate managers.

TowerXchange: Are most of your site visitors carriers, independent tower companies or specialist site acquisition companies?

We speak daily with Brazil’s major carriers, towercos and the site hunters. In most cases, the Brazilian carriers have outsourced site acquisition to specialist site hunters, so they are the main users of MyTower, alongside the towercos.

TowerXchange: When did MyTower launch, and how quickly are new properties being added to MyTower?

We launched the portal in December 2014. We’ve experienced very fast growth because word is spreading virally among subscribers. We have also been featured on some important technology sites in Brazil such as TiInside, Telesintese, TI Bahia and SindicoNet.

Today we’re getting more than 300 hits per day, but that number is growing daily. We already have over 100 properties listed on the portal, but more than 2,000 have been indexed – these are subscribers who have sent details of their properties to us, which we are gradually converting to list on the portal.

TowerXchange: Are you attracting more site listings from dense urban areas, such as the big cities in the South of Brazil, or from the less densely populated areas such as the North and Northeast of the country?

The MyTower portal is open to everyone; no matter the location, the owner may disclose the property. Naturally, large cities have more supply, but we have many advertisers from rural areas and the North and Northeast.

TowerXchange: Please describe the current level of coverage of Brazil’s carriers.

Today the Brazilian population is 200 million inhabitants, but there are 278 million active SIM cards across the country.

Brazil’s operators have coverage between 88.6% and 91.9% of the population, according to statistics from Anatel in February 2015.

The Federal government has identified 5,570 municipalities in Brazil which must have coverage in the coming years. The operator that has the greatest coverage is VIVO, but even they are present in only 3,757 municipalities. So they would need to install their infrastructure in 1,813 more municipalities in order to meet Anatel’s coverage requirements.

In many municipalities, there is not a healthy compliment of competing carriers. According to data from Anatel in February 2015, there was only one carrier offering a service in a third of Brazil’s municipalities, while in 16% there were only two carriers, three carriers in 9% of municipalities, and four in 34%. The statistics also include Algar and Sercomtel, so it rises to 47% of municipalities that have five carriers serving them, but less than 1% with all six.

TowerXchange: How many towers and rooftop cell sites are in Brazil and who owns them?

Currently there are 70,000 points of service in Brazil, including both macro towers and rooftops. However this doesn’t mean there are 70,000 different structures as many shared structures are registered once by each tenant. The main owners are the towercos such as American Tower and SBA in addition to the operators such as Claro, VIVO, TIM, Oi and Nextel.

Not all the towers were built by the large carriers and towercos. There are more than 7,000 Internet service providers market in Brazil and many of them have their own points of service.

TowerXchange: How do you see the future evolution of Brazil’s tower networks?

There is great potential in the Brazilian tower market. The country, and the South American continent, will require at least twice as many towers to meet coverage and capacity needs, especially with the arrival of 4G.

TowerXchange: Finally, do you have any interest to extend the MyTower portal to cover other markets as well as Brazil?

Although the company is currently 100% Brazilian, I chose the name “MyTower” so we would not have to rebrand to achieve global scale. We are currently talking to foreign investors from Israel, USA, Argentina, Mexico and of course Brazil.

The need for people to advertise their properties, and the need for operators and towercos to identify new sites, is identical worldwide. So our next step is to complete a version in English and Spanish. In fact we get more hits from Russia than anywhere except Brazil and the US, so perhaps that is an important audience to think about because of the size of the country.

At the moment the company is seeking investor funding in order to expand the business to other countries.