SpaceX seeks access to 80,000 US cell sites in Crown Castle talks

SpaceX is seeking access to 80,000 US cell sites and has held talks with tower owner Crown Castle, Bloomberg reported.

SpaceX’s 80,000-site target is roughly double the 40,000 towers Crown Castle owns and operates across the US. Crown Castle chief executive Chris Hillabrant did not say whether the company is negotiating a master lease agreement with SpaceX or Amazon, telling an Oct. 21 earnings call: "I don’t think I want to get into customer-specific detail, but you can assume that we’re talking to all parties."

For investors underwriting tower cash flows, the contract shape matters more than the site count. Mobile carriers lease space on towers owned by Crown Castle, American Tower and Vertical Bridge, the report says. A master lease covering many sites at once would concentrate a new carrier tenant’s revenue in a single agreement, and the report does not disclose a rate, term or committed site count.

SpaceX recently announced it will buy Grain Management’s nationwide 800MHz spectrum portfolio for $8 billion and has secured approval to deploy 15,000 high-capacity direct-to-device satellites. Crown Castle finance chief Sunit Patel called the acquisition "a huge milestone" and said 800MHz "does solve one of the critical challenges for an eventual SpaceX deployment, which is you need low band to get into buildings." T-Mobile’s John Saw has warned that it will take more than spectrum to build a competitive US network, the report says.

Elon Musk, on SpaceX’s earnings call this week, said the company will be building out its terrestrial network and has described an ambition to become the fourth main US carrier alongside AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, the report says.