Methodology and sources
Data
| What | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Every constructed antenna structure: owner, type, height, construction date, city, county, coordinates | FCC Antenna Structure Registration, weekly public access file (r_tower.zip, created 2026-10-18) — files RA (registration), EN (owner), CO (coordinates) | 2026-10-23 |
| County names | U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 county gazetteer; Connecticut's eight legacy counties and five renamed or merged county-equivalents (AK, SD, VA) named by hand because the FCC still files them under the old codes | 2026-10-23 |
| Which structures must register | 47 CFR 17.4 and 17.7 | 2026-10-23 |
| Crown Castle subsidiary names | Crown Castle 10-K Exhibit 21, FY2019 | 2026-10-23 |
What is counted
Only registrations with status C (constructed) in the 50 states and DC: 140,917 structures. Granted-but-unbuilt, cancelled, dismantled and terminated registrations are excluded; the status meanings were confirmed against each registration's own history events in the same file (for example, every "I" record's last event is "Registration set to Dismantled"). Height is overall height above ground, converted from metres. Coordinates are rounded to three decimals (about 100 metres); the FCC record linked from each row has the exact position.
Owner groups
A registrant is placed in a group only when its filed name carries the brand (for example "SBA Towers II LLC", "American Towers LLC", "T-Mobile West Tower LLC") or appears in the parent company's SEC subsidiary list (Crown Castle's CCATT, CCTM, Global Signal and Pinnacle Towers entities). Cellco Partnership is grouped with Verizon and New Cingular Wireless PCS with AT&T, the legal names those carriers use. Everything else is shown under its filed name. Groups are therefore undercounts, never overcounts.
Privacy
Owners filed as individuals or trusts, and any owner name without an organisational word (LLC, Inc., county, church, and so on), are shown as "Private owner (name withheld)". No contact names, phone numbers, email or street addresses from the FCC file are published here.
County pages
Counties with 10 or more constructed structures get a page; smaller counties are listed on their state page and in the lookup. Each county page shows up to 250 structures, tallest first.
The buyout calculator
Rent is paid monthly in arrears. An annual escalator raises the rent every 12 months; a five-year escalator raises it every 60 months. Each payment is discounted at the monthly equivalent of your annual rate, and the sum is the value today. The implied return is the annual rate at which that value equals the offer, found by bisection. The calculator assumes every payment is made to the end of the term you enter; it does not model early termination, taxes or revenue shares. Its arithmetic is pinned by tests, including a textbook annuity value.
Left out, and why
- Typical rents and buyout multiples: no neutral published source; the figures in circulation come from lease buyers.
- Unregistered towers (most under 200 feet away from airports): no national list exists.
- Territories (Puerto Rico, Guam and others): out of scope for this version.